Rome a century ago

I have a great love for Rome. I was there four years in seminary back in the 70s, and used the opportunity to give it a good going over!  Good enough to do some guiding when I was there, and some also on several September Pilgrimages since 1990. A few years back someone gave me, or I bought, I can't remember, a 1920s guide book. The date is important because Mussolini was already in power, but not so much yet with the, er, impact he had later. The English author, on the whole admires him, such that I wonder what he felt as the 20s moved into the thirties and towards the War...

It's also an interesting window on artistic and architectural fashions. He loves anything that is ancient Roman, is very fond of anything medieval, but absolutely despises the Baroque.  So not a very good city to do a guide-book then! Strange as this seems to me, a fan of Bernini and Borromini, the two great Roman Baroque architects, it makes you wonder what will be in fashion in a hundred years' time?  (Bernini's St Teresa Chapel in Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria left). It's similar to the Victorian taste in the UK - very out of fashion until recent times. Now Cardiff Castle, Castel Coch, works of Burgess, are looked on as masterpieces. Still it's always good to look through other people's eyes. 

Tucked in the back cover of the guidebook is a plan of Rome. It's a fraction of its present size, minus the wide roads like via dei Fori Imperiali and Via del Teatro di Marcello, that Mussolini drove through some of the narrow streets or the via Conciliazione leading up to St Peter's Square. In the 1920s it was still two narrow streets, Borgo Vecchio and Borgo Nuovo. (right, note St Peter's in background) Bernini's idea in planning the Piazza was for people to burst from these dark streets into the huge embrace of the light-filled square. Now we approach it in a  different spirit, seeing St Peter's at the end of the wide via Conciliazione, named after the agreeemnt that created Vatican City State in 1929.  But that was yet to come when my guide-book was written...