EUR, Rome: Where Stone, Light and Shadow Echo a Lost Vision

Rome is a city where the past is rarely far beneath the surface. Ancient temples rise beside apartment buildings, fragments of aqueduct stride across suburban fields, and Renaissance palaces occupy streets first laid out two thousand years ago. Yet several kilometres south of the historic centre lies another Rome altogether: monumental, ordered and strangely theatrical.

This is EUR, a district of vast avenues, pale travertine buildings, severe colonnades and immense geometric spaces. Its architecture borrows freely from ancient Rome, yet belongs unmistakably to the twentieth century. At times it appears almost like a stage set, familiar and foreign at once; a vision of Rome stripped of medieval lanes and Baroque exuberance and rebuilt according to symmetry, scale and political ambition.

The EUR district was established under Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, intending to host a Universal Exposition in 1942. The exposition never took place. War intervened, construction stopped and the grand project was left unfinished.

Yet EUR did not disappear.

Instead, post-war Rome inherited this strange architectural landscape and gradually transformed it, completing abandoned buildings, creating parks and sporting facilities, and turning what had been conceived as a monument to fascism into one of the most distinctive districts of the modern capital.

A New Rome for 1942

The idea began in the mid-1930s, when Rome sought to host a Universal Exposition that would celebrate Italian civilisation while also marking twenty years of Fascist rule. In December 1936, the Ente Autonomo Esposizione Universale di Roma was established to oversee the enormous project.

The site selected was at Tre Fontane, south of central Rome, on the broad axis leading towards Ostia and the Mediterranean. The choice was deliberate. EUR was never intended to be merely a temporary exhibition ground. After the exposition, it was expected to become the nucleus of Rome’s expansion towards the sea, a permanent new quarter of the capital.

Originally known as E42, for Esposizione 1942, the district was planned by a group of leading architects under the overall direction of Marcello Piacentini. Rationalist modernism was combined with the forms of ancient and Renaissance Rome: arches, colonnades, symmetrical facades, domes, broad stairways, and immense ceremonial spaces.

Travertine, the pale limestone that appears throughout ancient and Papal Rome, was used extensively. The intention was obvious. The architecture would appear modern yet timeless, creating a visual connection between ancient imperial Rome and the ambitions of the contemporary regime.

What results is a landscape that is both impressive and unsettling. Buildings are separated by unusually generous spaces, avenues stretch towards monumental focal points, and human figures can appear almost insignificant against the scale of the architecture.

Then history overwhelmed the project.

The Second World War made the Universal Exposition impossible. Work halted, buildings remained unfinished, and the celebrations for which EUR had been created never occurred.

The Square Colosseum

Nothing represents EUR more powerfully than the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana.

Standing high above the surrounding avenues, the enormous travertine cube is popularly known as the Colosseo Quadrato, the Square Colosseum. Designed by Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto Bruno Lapadula and Mario Romano, construction began in 1938.

Its four identical facades are pierced by repeated rows of Roman arches, 216 in total, turning one of the most recognisable elements of ancient architecture into an exercise in modern geometry. At around 68 metres high, the building dominates its elevated position and can be seen from considerable distances across the district.

Across the summit runs the famous inscription describing Italians as a people of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, navigators and travellers.

The reference to the Colosseum is unmistakable, but this is not an imitation of an ancient building. The arches have been reduced to repetition and rhythm. Decoration is restrained, surfaces are clean, and the enormous mass of travertine creates an almost abstract monumentality.

Seen beneath the intense Roman sun, the effect is remarkable. Deep shadows gather inside the arches while the stone glows almost white around them. Few buildings in Rome offer such striking combinations of repetition, light and shadow.

Its political origins cannot be separated from the building, yet its history did not end with the regime that created it. Today, the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana is the headquarters of the Roman fashion house Fendi, another example of the way EUR’s architecture has been absorbed into a very different modern city.

Palazzo dei Congressi and the Monumental Centre

Across EUR, other buildings continue the dialogue between classical Rome and twentieth-century modernism.

Among the finest is the Palazzo dei Congressi, designed by Adalberto Libera towards the end of the 1930s. Its immense white surfaces, monumental colonnade, and striking roof combine Rationalist simplicity with a distinctly classical sense of order.

The building feels less oppressive than some of EUR’s more monumental architecture. Its proportions have an elegance and clarity that reveal the tension at the heart of the entire project: between modernism and antiquity, functional architecture and political spectacle.

Nearby, Piazza Guglielmo Marconi forms another major point in EUR’s carefully constructed perspectives. At its centre rises the monument to Guglielmo Marconi, commissioned in 1939 and designed by sculptor Arturo Dazzi.

Its history mirrors that of EUR itself. Work was interrupted by the war, resumed years later, and the monument was finally inaugurated in 1959 as Rome prepared for the Olympic Games. Its marble reliefs depict human figures, animals, dances, and other imagery associated with Marconi and communication.

Around the piazza stand monumental buildings now occupied by cultural institutions, including the Museo delle Civilta. Their immense facades and regimented colonnades preserve much of the ceremonial scale envisaged for the lost exposition.

A Basilica Above EUR

One of EUR’s most unexpected landmarks is the Basilica dei Santi Pietro e Paolo.

Standing on one of the district’s highest points, the church rises above a monumental staircase and commands long views across EUR. Like much of the district, it was conceived before the war but completed afterwards.

Its design is based on a Greek-cross plan and crowned by an imposing hemispherical dome some 32 metres in diameter. The exterior is faced in travertine, again linking the modern district with Rome’s architectural traditions. The church finally opened for worship in 1955.

Seen from below, the effect is almost dreamlike. The enormous dome, statues and broad stairway seem to belong to a highly simplified version of classical Rome, monumental but strangely devoid of the visual complexity that characterises so much of the historic centre.

It is this quality that makes wandering through EUR so intriguing. Familiar elements of Rome continually appear, but they have been reordered into something very different.

From Fascist Vision to Olympic Rome

For several years after the war, the unfinished EUR remained an uncomfortable inheritance.

Eventually, however, Rome chose not to abandon the district. Construction resumed during the 1950s, unfinished buildings were completed, new offices and residential areas appeared, and the former exhibition site gradually became a functioning part of the city.

The transformation accelerated as Rome prepared to host the 1960 Olympic Games.

One of the great additions of this period was the Palazzo dello Sport, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi and Marcello Piacentini. Its enormous reinforced-concrete dome, approximately 95 metres across, demonstrated how dramatically Italian architecture had changed while still retaining the monumental scale established at EUR two decades earlier. During the Olympics, it hosted basketball and boxing events.

The Olympics effectively gave EUR the opportunity its cancelled exposition never had: to become an international showcase for Rome.

But this time the message was very different.

The city presenting itself to the world in 1960 was no longer Fascist Italy proclaiming imperial ambitions. It was a democratic nation undergoing rapid economic and social transformation, and the unfinished spaces of EUR were adapted to that new reality.

The Lake and the Softer Side of EUR

Perhaps the greatest surprise in EUR lies only a short distance from its monumental architecture.

The Parco Centrale del Lago introduces water, trees, gardens, and broad lawns into the severe geometry of the surrounding district. The artificial lake had been envisaged as part of the original 1942 plan but was not completed until the post-war redevelopment associated with the 1960 Olympics.

Approximately one kilometre long, the lake transforms the character of EUR. Reflections replace stone; tree-lined paths soften the monumental avenues, and the district suddenly becomes quieter and more intimate.

Especially beautiful is the Passeggiata del Giappone, designed by landscape architect Raffaele de Vico. Cherry trees donated by the city of Tokyo line the promenade and blossom spectacularly during the spring hanami season.

Nearby, the Giardino delle Cascate combines rock, vegetation, pools, and flowing water in one of EUR’s most attractive landscaped spaces. Opened in 1961, its cascades were not merely decorative; the movement of the water also helped oxygenate the lake.

The contrast is striking. Within minutes it is possible to move from the severe arches and immense stone surfaces of the Square Colosseum into a landscape of cherry blossom, water and mature trees.

It is another reminder that EUR is no longer simply the place its creators imagined.

Discovering EUR

For years, the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana had been one of those intriguing Roman landmarks that I knew only from a distance. During visits to Rome, I would occasionally glimpse its unmistakable white form from the window of a taxi travelling from the airport towards my hotel in the historic centre. Even from afar, its repeated arches and monumental proportions caught my attention. I would wonder about its history and promise myself that, on one of my visits, I would finally make the journey out to see it properly. Yet Rome has an extraordinary ability to fill every available day, and somehow its ancient ruins, churches, museums, gardens, and familiar streets always took priority.

When I eventually made the easy journey to EUR, however, I discovered far more than the building that had first captured my imagination. Seeing the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana at close range was extraordinary; its gleaming travertine, immense symmetrical facades and endless rhythm of arches leaving me in complete wonder, but it was EUR as a whole that made the greatest impression. The broad avenues, monumental architecture, immense open spaces, sculptural forms, and surprising contrast of stone, gardens, and water created an atmosphere unlike anywhere else I had experienced in Rome.

As a photographer, I was completely in my element. Everywhere I looked, there were shapes, lines, repetitions, and strong contrasts between brilliant Roman sunlight and deep architectural shadow. One building seemed to lead naturally to another, while monumental perspectives opened unexpectedly towards domes, colonnades, sculptures and distant facades. What I had imagined would simply be a visit to the Square Colosseum became one of my most enjoyable experiences in Rome. EUR revealed an entirely different face of the city to me, and one that I had overlooked for far too long.

A Different Face of Rome

Modern EUR continues to evolve.

The district is now home to businesses, government offices, museums, residential buildings, parks, and cultural venues. The striking glass-and-steel Roma Convention Centre, known as La Nuvola and designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, has introduced another architectural era into a district already composed of several layers of twentieth-century history.

EUR has also fascinated filmmakers, particularly directors attracted to its unusual scale, empty perspectives and almost surreal architecture. Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni were among those who used the district as a cinematic landscape.

As a photographer, I found the attraction just as evident. Travertine facades catch the changing Roman light; repetitive arches create almost endless compositions; long perspectives terminate in domes, obelisks, and monumental buildings. Even shadows seem architectural here.

Yet EUR should not be regarded simply as a collection of beautiful modernist buildings.

Designed by a dictatorship, the architecture served, in part, as political propaganda. The grandeur of the buildings cannot be understood without acknowledging the ideology behind their construction.

What makes EUR especially fascinating today, however, is that history refused to stop there.

The exposition was cancelled, the regime collapsed, the buildings were abandoned and then reclaimed. A district intended to proclaim one vision of Italy survived to serve another. Offices replaced exhibition halls, Olympic athletes arrived where Fascist ceremonies had been planned, fashion moved into the Square Colosseum, and cherry trees blossomed beside a lake that had existed only on architects’ drawings before the war.

Rome has always had an extraordinary ability to inherit the monuments of earlier ages and give them new lives. Ancient temples became churches; imperial buildings became fortresses and palaces; columns and marble were incorporated into later cities.

EUR represents a much more recent version of the same phenomenon.

It is not the Rome of ruins, fountains and Baroque piazzas. It is a Rome of vast spaces, monumental silence and difficult history; a city conceived for a future that never came, yet somehow found another future of its own.

View a selection of images of EUR.

All images and text © Steven Sklifas