It also utilised new styles of architecture but favoured Stripped Classicism over modernism, in an attempt to unify the people, mark a new era of nationalist culture, and exhibit the absolute rule of the state.

This practice of moving people out of the city centers and into rural areas[5] to farm or to work in mines, especially during the time of autarchy, is similar to disurbanism.

Mussolini invested in public construction projects in order to foster economic development, to gain popular support and modernize the country.

But it is especially during the totalitarian acceleration of the 1930s that the Regime asked its architects to reflect the values of Fascism, a form of pedagogical architecture for the masses.

Hitler banned Bauhaus and Jewish architects, some of which escaped to Mandatory Palestine and would later go on to build the White City of Tel Aviv.

However even after 1937 some Italian Jewish architects were exempted from the racial laws, such as Giuseppe Pagano and Vittorio Morpurgo, and kept working on some of the most important Fascist monuments and buildings.

Morpurgo worked on the buildings in the newly created Emperor Augustus Square, including the 1938 enclosure of the Ara Pacis (demolished in the early 2000s) and the Museum of the Roman ships of lake Nemi.

[3] Piacentini wanted to give Fascist Italy a proper architectural style and Mussolini repaid him by assigning him some of the most important public building projects of the Regime.

Piacentini distinguished himself for his extraordinary efficiency and organizing skills, he completed Victory Square in Brescia in just 3 years,[3] as well as for embracing the modernist rationalist style, and understanding what Mussolini wanted.

Before he was even finished with the square in Brescia, he was tasked with an even bigger project: La Città Universitaria di Roma (the city of the Sapienza University in Rome).

Piacentini designed the main building with the rectorate and divided the rest of the project among other architects, giving them a unitary direction to follow.

According to historians Renzo de Felice and Paolo Nicoloso, it was at the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war, when popular consensus reached its peak, that Fascism moved from a logic of "lasting" in power by gathering consensus to a logic of "daring" to make bold moves, of creating the "new man" and penetrating even more into the lives of every citizen, building a faith around the myth of ancient Rome.

[3] To convey the idea of romanity to the masses, Fascist Architecture shifted towards more neo-roman styles and the main turning point was the E42 project.

Again the modern projects submitted, featuring glass skyscrapers, were scrapped in favor of buildings with Roman elements, a city of arches and columns meant to convey the idea that "a people of conquerors and dominators had returned".

[11][10] March's stadium, modern in its aesthetics, did not match the Nazi's goal to use the Olympics to display themselves as an imperial power in the mold of the Roman Empire.

Around 1936 Italy designed a large rally ground called Arengo delle Nazioni to be built near the Mussolini Forum, about the size of the Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg.

Like the E42, the new Berlin was designed to last hundreds if not thousands of years, and took inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt, Babylon, and was meant to surpass Paris and London and Washington D.C. with its monuments.

Another proof of the rivalry between Germany and Italy at the time is the fact that, while the rest of the plans for the new Berlin were made public, and Piacentini even dedicated a number of the magazine Architettura to them, Hitler told Speer and Goebbels to not show the Grosse Halle to Mussolini, for fear that he might copy it.

Some of the buildings purposefully conveyed a sense of awe and intimidation through their size, and were made of limestone, travertino, marble and other durable stones in order to last for centuries and to create impressive ruins.

Hitler and Mussolini used this architecture as a source of propaganda to display to the world the strength, pride and power their regimes had[16] but also to break ties with the liberal past; in some cases the buildings were part of the modernization process of the country or followed the need dictated by the economic models.

[5] In other cases the buildings served the welfare programs of the respective regimes: in Italy, Fascism built public buildings such as thousands of Case del Fascio (plural of Casa del Fascio) in every major town and city, which were the local Nationalist Fascist Party house and served various purposes including offering services to the population.