In August 1960, on the eve of the Rome Olympic Games, neo-Fascists in the Rome suburb of EUR left two cardboard cylinders filled with gunpowder and metal spikes on the steps of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. Popularly known as the ‘square colosseum’, the palazzo was a legacy of the much hyped but never held 1942 Esposizione Universale Roma, from which the suburb's postwar name derived. Flyers left at the scene mockingly invited the Italian government, which had recently removed two Fascist mosaics from the Foro Italico, another important Fascist-era site and the main venue for the 1960 Games, to blow up the palazzo as well. The incident, small in itself, is significant in two respects. First, the far right clearly saw the protection of Fascism's architectural and artistic legacy as an important weapon in postwar Italy's memory wars over the Fascist ventennio, as (quite literally) concrete evidence of the regime's achievements. Second, the removal of the two mosaics at the Foro Italico paradoxically demonstrated the Italian government's laissez-faire approach to dealing with that legacy.

Today in Italy, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana is one of the most admired examples of interwar (i.e. no longer ‘Fascist’) architecture, while the Foro Italico is considered an all too rare model of excellence in the history of twentieth-century Italian urban planning and design. For many foreign observers, the willingness of Italians to aestheticise rather than historicise Fascist heritage suggests that Mussolini has indeed achieved a degree of immortality through stone – a particularly worrying development given (and, it is said, partly because of) the far right's resurgence in Italy in recent years.

It is within this particular context, set against the broader background of growing right-wing populism in western democracies, that Jones and Pilat's edited collection is framed. Across 545 pages and 42 chapters, the book explores a myriad of sites and buildings constructed under the regime in Italy and abroad, ranging from the well-known (EUR, the Foro Italico, the ‘model’ Fascist towns of the Agro Pontino (Pontine Marshes), Asmara), to the less familiar (the Kallithea bath complex near Rhodes, the Casa della Madre e del Bambino in Trieste, the Semirurali housing project in Bolzano/Bozen). Mirroring this, the international and multidisciplinary cast of 40 contributors includes not only internationally renowned scholars such as Mia Fuller, Paolo Nicoloso, Jeffrey Schnapp and Brian McLaren, but also recent graduates and early career researchers, as well as non-academic, industry-based, professional practitioners. The number and variety of authors is both a strength and a weakness of the book. On the one hand, it allows for a plurality of voices and perspectives. On the other hand, the relevance and quality of contributions varies enormously. While the best essays stick rigorously to the editors’ brief – to examine how the meanings of Fascist buildings and sites have been ‘transformed or preserved through their reuse, abandonment, adaptation, or acceptance’ (p. 3) – some chapters focus instead on issues of design and construction, barely leaving the confines of the ventennio. Some essays are also extremely thin in terms of their underlying research and/or argument. Others contain errors which really should have been picked up prior to publication: in one case, an interview given by former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni in 2013 is presented as a response to comments made in 2015 by the then speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini (p. 119); in another, we are told that over 1.7 million Italians died in Nazi concentration camps (p. 498). Despite its length, there are also noticeable gaps and imbalances in the book's coverage. North-east Italy is heavily featured but Fascist architecture south of the Agro Pontino is barely mentioned. Fascist art is also overlooked, even though the visual arts and architecture went hand-in-hand under Fascism.

Such shortcomings do not diminish the value and significance of the volume as a whole: this is a major contribution to our understanding of the many different ways in which Fascism's architectural legacy has been (in the editors’ words) ‘transformed, narrated, or adapted and by whom and to what ends’ (p. 2) since 1945. In the absence of a clearly defined or consistently applied national government policy regarding Fascist heritage, the fate of Fascist architecture since the war has nearly always been decided at the local level. Local context, therefore, is crucial to understanding what has happened to architecture constructed under the regime, and the case study approach adopted here excels in this regard. What also comes through in many of the contributions is the importance of adaptive capacity and functionality. Irrespective of their architectural merits, structures whose precise purpose did not survive the death of the regime – for example, ex-PNF headquarters, former case del Balilla – have often struggled to find appropriate new uses and have eventually ended up abandoned. In contrast, sites and buildings built for more than just Fascist ends – schools, universities, hospitals, sports and swimming complexes, post offices – have remained useful, and used.

Functionality not only helps explain the survival and continued use of many Fascist buildings since 1945, but also why this architecture today is not widely thought of as ‘Fascist’: buildings are associated with function rather than ideological affiliation, they have become places of memory that are personal rather than political. This does not mean that we should not be troubled by deliberate attempts to gloss over the ideological underpinnings of major Fascist landmarks, as Fendi has attempted to do at the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, its global headquarters since 2015 (see chapters 6 and 7). Nor should we ignore or downplay politicised restoration projects designed to advance the interests of the far right (for example, in Guidonia and Latina, see chapters 16 and 17). At the same time, though, we should not be too concerned that the banality of everyday use has rendered many ‘Fascist’ buildings mute.