Un fiume per Roma Capitale: the socio-political landscape of the Tiber embankment, 1870-1910

Abstract

In conclusion, I hope to have convincingly placed Rome's embankment of the Tiber at the end of the nineteenth century as the discursive embodiment of two prominent ideals of the Risorgimento: 'modernity' and national identity. Clark sums up the socio-political importance of Italian unification and independence, stating: "socially and ideologically, it embodied the triumph of economic modernity and of rational thought over traditional prejudice and clerical obscurantism; politically, it ensured constitutional liberty, national independence, and even Great Power status." These narratives of modernity and national identity are textually visible in both the rhetorical goals of the project as well as in its materialized physical form. Moreover, I have hope to have demonstrated that in certain cases, the cultural politics of the Roman Risorgimento experience were not only symbolically imprinted onto Canevari's project, but that the physical space of the Tiber during this period played a significant role as an interlocutor of this historical passage.