University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series (Dec 2016)
‘Piazzale Loreto’ in Milan, from the ‘20s to the Present. Architectural and Historical Memories from a Space of Dis/Affection
Abstract
This study aims to highlight the role played by a significant public place of Milan, ‘piazzale Loreto’ that, throughout time, has been at the centre of attention for many reasons, gradually becoming a place of dis/affection and contestation. In fact, the square, today, is a consequence of its painful past, and even the municipality has not been able to reconfigure it in a proper way, since it is still a huge void, an enormous square with an almost ignored commemorative monument at the centre. But first, it all started during the ’20s, when Milan was changing, becoming a financial-cultural centre, and piazzale Loreto was a point of reference for tourists and workers who wanted a comfortable place to stay: actually the “Titanus”, the biggest hotel of the city, was conceived as a monumental building, born to satisfy the practical, modern needs of its middle-class hosts. Unfortunately, opened in 1928, it was already in decline a few years later, due to the economic crisis and the international, difficult mood of the ’30s, which affected several European and nonEuropean countries, Italy included. Then, during the Second World War, the building was given to the SS and, in 1943, bombed by the Anglo-American forces, to the point that, at the end of the conflict, the hotel was almost destroyed. Nevertheless, it became a passive witness of the ‘Strage di piazzale Loreto’ (piazzale Loreto slaughter) on the 8th of August 1944, when a Nazi-fascist squad killed fifteen partisans. Again, just a few months later, after the fall of the regime, the same square was chosen as the ‘revenge place’ where Benito Mussolini, Claretta Petacci and other fascists’ corpses were exhibited in full public sight. Since even the plan conceived under the Reconstruction was not able to ‘redeem’ the place, after several decades, the place it is just a traffic intersection, where no one can easily pass through it by walking. All these difficulties are still demonstrated by the most recent debate, based on the (unrealized) idea that piazzale Loreto should house the Tree of Life Expo 2015.
