The entrance zone to Rome has, for millennia, been the setting for entries and marches, welcomed or contested. It is a symbolic precinct, and a palimpsest of toponyms, extant or remembered, connected with Augustus, Constantine, Pope Leo X Medici, and Mussolini. Drawing on new material from private archives, this article traces the interwar development of this zone, revealing an unknown story of the synergy among several projects: the restoration of Villa Madama (Raphael’s villa and papal welcoming center for the Medici), the coeval construction of the neighboring Foro Mussolini, and the siting nearby of the Palazzo Littorio (conceived as the Fascist Party Headquarters but subsequently realized as the Foreign Ministry). Fascist planners conceived this forum as a new gateway to Rome, and a staging ground for Fascist ideology and mass spectacle. It emerges that Raphael’s villa was a significant node of the plans; its site, form, function, and symbolism were tied to the forum, which grew to englobe the villa and the Ministry palace within a verdant park. Moreover, the appropriation of the so-called Renaissance garden as an emblem of italianità provided the context for both the re-creation of the villa’s gardens and the design of Mussolini’s forum—itself presented as an Italian garden, an unexplored instance of the mythologizing and manipulation of Renaissance heritage by Fascist ideologues establishing the Third Rome.

The development of this zone constitutes a kaleidoscopic case study for the construction of political and cultural identity through urban design and landscape. Dismembered and partially neutralized post-war, the area currently represents a challenging entanglement of memory, heritage, politics, and aesthetics. And though the function and meaning of a city gateway have fundamentally changed over time, the long history of this topography—both real and metaphysical—is ingrained in the identity of modern Rome.