Palazzo degli Uffici dell'Ente Autonomo.

Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (Square Colosseum).

Read on for our guide to the sights you need to see. Monumental, stark and strikingly out of touch with the Rome of the popular imagination, EUR’s hyper-rationalist architecture is a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest in modern architecture or the uncomfortable legacy of Fascism in the Eternal city. It was in the city’s southern outskirts that his plans reached their fullest expression, in what’s now known as the EUR quarter (short for Esposizione Universale Roma). Recognising that the iconic marble architecture of ancient Rome had propagandistically projected an enduring image of the empire’s imperial bona-fides, at the height of his power Mussolini decided that he too would harness the symbolic power of architectural form to give dramatic material form to his vision of a revitalised Italian empire united under fascism’s inhuman banner.

And for good reason: the great flowering of architectural modernism in the Eternal City coincided with the inexorable rise of Italian fascism in the 1930s, and the major monuments of the period are inextricably linked to the cult of the totalitarian regime’s absolute leader – Benito Mussolini. Unless you’re a clued-in architecture buff, it’s a lot less likely that you’ll be familiar with Rome’s modernist architectural heritage. But scratch the surface a little more deeply, and you’ll soon find that the Roman skyline is about a lot more than the Colosseum and St. Magnificent ancient temples, their ruined marble columns slowly crumbling to dust airy Renaissance palaces, walls covered from floor to ceiling with impossibly elegant frescoes of cavorting gods and men massive Baroque churches studded with gold and jewels, their domes seeming to defy the laws of physics as they soar into the sky.

When you think of the splendid architecture that sparkles from every corner of the Eternal City, certain well-worn images inevitably spring to mind.

Rome 2 dei guide