EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma, the Universal Exhibition of Rome, planned for 1942, never held because of WWII) is the most architecturally coherent Fascist urban planning project in Italy and the one most directly comparable to Albert Speer's plans for Berlin or the Soviet constructivist city plans of the 1930s: a complete urban district designed from scratch according to a totalitarian urban planning aesthetic, meant to express the grandeur of Fascist Italy to a global audience that never arrived. The exhibition was cancelled by the war. The district was completed in modified form in the 1950s and became a business and residential quarter of Rome's southern expansion. Today EUR functions as a normal, if specific, Rome neighborhood, the headquarters of major Italian corporations, a residential area with its own specific middle-class character, and an architectural open-air museum of the rationalist Fascist style that is completely accessible at all hours.
The specific EUR aesthetic: the Fascist rationalist architecture of EUR combines classical references (arches, colonnades, axial symmetry) with the stripped modernism of the 1930s international style in a hybrid that critics have called "Fascist classicism", monumental scale, white travertine surfaces, and the specific quality of buildings that are simultaneously ancient (the references to the Roman Imperial tradition) and modern (the reinforced concrete construction, the geometric simplification of classical ornament). Whether this is architecture worth admiring is a separate question from whether it is architecture worth understanding, and EUR is the place where Italian Fascist architecture is most concentrated, most intact, and most legible as an urban system.
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EUR: The Key Monuments
Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana: The Square Colosseum
The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (1940, architects Guerrini, La Padula, Romano), universally nicknamed the "Colosseo Quadrato" (the Square Colosseum), is the most internationally recognized image of EUR and of Italian Fascist architecture generally. The building: a perfect rectangular prism of 6 floors, each with 9 arches on the short sides and 9 on the long sides (216 arches total), faced entirely in travertine, mounted on a podium of steps, and inscribed with the famous Mussolinian phrase about the Italian people "di poeti di artisti di eroi di santi di pensatori di scienziati di navigatori di trasmigratori" (a people of poets, artists, heroes, saints, thinkers, scientists, navigators, and emigrants). Currently used as the Fendi fashion house headquarters (the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana was got by Fendi in 2013 as their Rome corporate headquarters, the specific juxtaposition of the luxury fashion brand and the Fascist monument is both incongruous and appropriate to the Roman tendency to inhabit historical layers without excessive anxiety). The exterior is freely photographable from the piazza. The interior isn't generally open to the public.
Le Vele E Fungo Eur: tours & tickets
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See availability & prices →Compare tours on Viator →We may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.Il Fungo: The EUR Water Tower
Il Fungo (the Mushroom, the EUR water tower, built 1959 at the intersection of Viale Europa and the lake, visible from throughout the district) is the most specifically loved piece of post-Fascist EUR infrastructure: a concrete water tower whose distinctive mushroom silhouette (a wide cylindrical tank on a slim concrete column) has become the specific EUR landmark that Romani use to identify the district's image. The tower contains a revolving restaurant at the top (panoramic view over the EUR district and toward central Rome), periodically operated under different management, check current status before planning a visit.
Q&A: EUR Rome
Is EUR worth visiting as a tourist?
For the visitor interested in 20th-century architectural history: yes, unequivocally. The EUR district provides the most concentrated and best-preserved example of Fascist rationalist urban planning in Europe, in a context where the buildings are inhabited and used rather than preserved as monuments, which makes the architectural experience more complex and more interesting than a museum presentation would. For the visitor interested primarily in ancient Rome, the Renaissance, or the Baroque: EUR is an optional detour rather than an essential stop. The practical approach: combine EUR with the Cristoforo Colombo beach drive (Via Cristoforo Colombo continues south through EUR to Ostia, Rome's beach) for a half-day that combines architectural tourism with the specific Roman summer tradition of the beach road.
