L’E 42 da grande esposizione a città di fondazione verso il mare

The essay wants to prove the thesis that E42, founded with the declared aim of a GREAT UNIVERSAL EXIBITION to be held in Rome to celebrate the 20th anniversary of National Fascist Party, had the primary objective the realization of a city near the seaside. In fact, in the first project phase, redacted by the strange union consisting of Marcello Piacentini, Giuseppe Pagano, Luigi Piccinato, Luigi Vietti and Ettore Rossi, in harged all together of the realization of a planivolumetric plan – the aim wasn’t only that to create a temporary and occasional complex for the short-lived period of an exhibition, but had to create the structure for a first great centre of Rome, projected towards the overseas territories, as evidenced by the roximity to the coast of the area examined. Even the great axis of the plan continued to the seaside of Castel Fusano with interesting underpasses with stylish, modern, new and dynamic solutions. The buildings in steel, cement and glass walls were the models of a learned nationalism, result also of the research of avant-garde that in Italy, in particular in southern area, had put the root for the monumentality that, sometimes, governed, both for the prosecution of a unprogressive neo-eclecticism and, finally, for the development of the other modernity The aim was later betrayed by the revocation of the assignment to the starting group of design and also by the beginning of the War with the consequential suspension of the works. A lost Modernity for Italy of the 1930s?