"Ora non ho più da fare". Riflessioni su Marcello Piacentini. Roma, la Città Universitaria, la rinascita dell'Eur

e centrality of Marcello Piacentini in the formation of many aspects of modern Rome is well known. It can be seen theoretically in his desire to redesign a city burdened by the weight of its history, which in his vision contained many references to European and American metropolises (when Piacentini wrote his rst treatise, On Beauty and Conservation ... 1916, he had just returned from the United States) but above all on an operational level. In addition, Piacentini was likely the protagonist in the formation of a Regulatory Plan, that of 1931, which almost entirely changed the physiognomy of Rome and that gave shape to the image of Mussolini’s city. But within the same city, in which his imprint could now be seen, he designed two other projects: the citadel of Sapienza and E.42. e rst, a true walled city whose paths symbolically allude, from the entrance to the Rectorate, to the progress of knowledge; the second, instead, followed with authorial passion until the 1960 Olympics, almost until his death. Correspon- dence, sketches, and documents testify to a growing torment during the post-war period on the future destiny of what had been achieved and on the need to conclude a journey that had been interrupted in a whitewash of modern ruins.