fascist manhole covers
I must have been 9 when my maternal grandmother Emma took me on my first little fascist sightseeing tour of her neighbourhood in Reggio Calabria. She was a beautiful, austere former PE teacher and a talented poet writing in our local dialect. She was also, to her death, a fervent fascist.
We were walking around the apartment block built under Mussolini where she lived, when she pointed at a manhole cover and asked me if it had been cast in Catania, Sicily. The writing on the manhole cover, wrapped around what I later discovered were lictor’s fasces, read “Fonderia Corsaro Catania”. “If it was cast in Catania, then it must be one of those ordered by Mussolini when He had Reggio’s sewage system sorted out” my grandma said “Oh, if he were still around, he’d straighten everything out! See that podium over there, at the end of the square? That’s where Mussolini used to deliver his speeches. Oh, the crowds! The square was bulging at the seams with people when he was in Reggio. There used to be a beautiful cast-iron sculpture of a rampant eagle right on top of the podium, you know? And then the bloody communists took it. Oh, when he was around! We could leave our doors open at night with no worries, Ivanuccio.”
To this day, the cast iron of our fascist manhole covers and that of the missing eagle epitomize grandma’s dream of a safe, ordered city Reggio Calabria probably never was.
