Festa e politica nel Carnevale. Viareggio e il fascismo

This article traces the resurgence of the Viareggio Carnival in the immediate post-war period and how it became embedded within the city’s political life following the rise of Fascism. The chapter examines the history of the Carnival from organisational, ideological and symbolic perspectives, highlighting the regime’s gradual process of ‘Fascistisation’. From a traditional bourgeois festival, the regime transformed the event into a national celebration and then, in the second half of the 1930s, thanks to the involvement of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, reoriented it into a folkloric festival integrated into the liturgy of the fascist political religion.