Reconstruction in post-war Rome: transnational flows and national identity

2.1 THE ITALIAN SUPERINTENDENCIES

First-aid for cultural heritage during and in the immediate aftermath of war is crucial to preventing further damage. Such measures typically include on-site actions such as rapid damage assessment, site security and preliminary structural stabilisation. In Italy, this work relied heavily on existing institutions, above all the Soprintendenze, the regional heritage offices of the Italian state, which assumed primary responsibility for implementing these emergency measures.

The Italian superintendencies were established under the Law no. 185 of 12 June 1902 and Royal Decree no. 431 of 17 July 1904 as territorial branches of the central authority of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts.¹ These 58 regional offices were entrusted with monitoring, regulating and preserving Italy’s cultural assets, with the authority to supervise restorations, excavations and constructions affecting protected sites. By the 1930s, the superintendencies had developed into a professionalised system of local heritage administration, staffed by Soprintendenti (superintendents) who combined technical expertise with institutional authority. They implemented policies and directives issued by the General Directorate while providing essential local oversight.

In June 1939, on the eve of Italy’s entry into the Second World War, the Law on ‘Tutela delle cose d’interesse artistico e storico’ (Protection of Objects of Artistic and Historic Value) was enacted.² Commonly known as the ‘Legge Bottai’, this legislation codified the systematic protection of Italy’s cultural assets. Under this mandate, measures were taken both to shield immovable monuments and to relocate movable works of art under the threat of war damage and looting. Beginning in 1940, large numbers of masterpieces were removed from museums and galleries, initially stored in scattered warehouses across the Marche, Umbria and Lazio, and eventually transported at the approach of war into the safe walls of the Vatican. Between December 1943 and May 1944, for example, Pasquale Rotondi, Superintendent of Fine Art for the Marche region, together with Emilio Lavagnino and Giulio Carlo Argan, central inspectors for the General Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts, coordinated the relocation of approximately 700 crates containing thousands of Italian artworks to the Vatican (Lavagnino 1946, 1974; Bucarelli 1997).

For immovable masterpieces, protective structures were introduced throughout the war to shield some of the most significant monuments in historic cities such as Rome, Florence and Venice. These structures of sandbags, wooden planks, masonry enclosures and reinforced-concrete casings were installed by the Italian Fascist government beginning in 1940 and widely publicised by the Istituto L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa (Institute of the Educational Film Union, hereafter ‘Luce Institute’) as part of nationwide heritage-protection efforts. In practice, however, only a small proportion of Italy’s cultural monuments benefited from such measures (Nezzo 2011). In June 1940, the Luce Institute released a film entitled ‘Lavori per la protezione delle opere d’arte della Capitale’ (Works to Protect the Capital’s Works of Art), which documented workers constructing protective structures for the Ara Pacis, the Colosseum, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Campidoglio, the Borghese Museum and the Colonna Gallery (Archivio Storico Istituto Luce 1940). For smaller monuments, or for particularly fragile components such as triumphal arches, altars and decorative elements, the most common method was to enclose them in timber scaffolding filled with sandbags, as seen for the arches of Titus, Septimius Severus and Constantine. In other instances, more advanced technologies were employed. For example, reinforced concrete casings clad in brick were erected around the bases of the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, representing some of the most ambitious and technically sophisticated anti-aircraft protection executed in Italy during the Second World War (Figure 1). As Coccoli (2024: 12) has observed, the protection of Rome’s cultural heritage was ‘emblematic’ in its use of varied methods:

Figure 1

These first-aid activities formed the foundation for subsequent reconstruction work. After the fall of the Fascist regime, the superintendents continued their work, even as the very notion of ‘national heritage’ became ambiguous and contested. The transition from dictatorship to republic disrupted the ideological and institutional frameworks through which heritage had previously been defined, instrumentalised and administered. The Fascist cultural policy of a highly centralised and rhetorically unified patrimonio nazionale fractured in the immediate post-war years as political legitimacy shifted and administrative structures reconfigured. Questions of continuity and rupture—what to preserve, how to interpret it and under whose authority—remained unresolved, leaving national heritage a blurred and contested concept.

In practice, institutional arrangements were provisional, often unclear and frequently in conflict with each other. Formal guidance was limited, and administrative coordination uneven. Yet despite these constraints, the superintendents demonstrated remarkable initiative and commitment, actively shaping the course of reconstruction in ways that earned recognition beyond Italy’s borders. In summer 1948, art historian Rudolf Wittkower toured war-torn northern Italy under the guidance of Venice’s Superintendent Ferdinando Forlati. His follow-up letter in The Burlington Magazine (1949) lauded the ‘new methods’ devised by Italian teams to achieve ‘amazingly speedy and highly successful restoration’. Wittkower specifically noted ‘the ingenuity, enthusiasm and devotion’ shown by everybody from the superintendents to the labourers, and he was struck that even a population short on many necessary amenities ‘supports the policy of giving preference to the restoration of the national inheritance’ (Wittkower 1949).

Despite efforts to navigate administrative limitations, a major practical constraint on reconstruction was the dire post-war financial reality. In 1944–45, the Italian government allocated 50 million lire for the routine restoration of war-damaged monuments, while surveys estimated immediate reinforcement and first-aid work would require at least 1.5 billion lire—far exceeding the available budget. Of this, the government earmarked approximately 600 million lire for 1945, with around 200 million lire reserved for reopening libraries, schools, academies of fine arts and music conservatories. The funds available for war-damaged monument remained far from sufficient to address the urgent need (Bianchi Bandinelli 1946). In 1946, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, then Director-General of Antiquities and Fine Arts, highlighted this shortage by comparing Italy’s situation with that of France, another European nation with extensive war-damaged artistic patrimony. That year the French budget allocated 750 million francs for reconstruction of state-owned monuments and civic buildings, 100 million francs for non-state buildings, and over 2 million francs for restoration of works of art in national monuments—amounting to a total of 855 million francs, or approximately 2 billion lire, more than three times of the Italian allocation. Bianchi Bandinelli thus pointed out the stark disparity between Italy’s cultural responsibilities and its post-war resources, warning that without external assistance the restoration of war-damaged monuments would be fatally delayed:

2.2 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE RESTORATION OF MONUMENTS DAMAGED BY WAR

As Italy’s political and institutional structures remained unstable and governmental mechanisms proved insufficient, the need for fundraising and public engagement became increasingly urgent, prompting the emergence for new organisational forms. On 30 October 1944, only a few months after the liberation of Rome (4 June 1944), a group of art historians, archaeologists and artists founded the Associazione Nazionale per il Restauro dei Monumenti Danneggiati dalla Guerra (National Association for the Restoration of Monuments Damaged by War, hereafter ‘the Association’).

Working in close collaboration with the superintendencies and the Ministry of Public Education, the Association brought together leading figures from Italy’s intellectual and cultural elite, including Pietro Toesca, Lavagnino and Alberto Terenzio (Esposito 2011). Its first president was the archaeologist Umberto Zanotti Bianco, who simultaneously served as president of the Italian Red Cross between 1944 and 1949. Drawing on his experience in humanitarian relief, Zanotti Bianco linked cultural reconstruction to broader efforts of post-war recovery and helped to re-establish Italy’s standing within international networks after the war (Lelardi 1996). The Association’s founding statute, approved on 2 March 1945 at Palazzo Venezia in Rome, defined its aims as threefold: to disseminate knowledge of the state of Italy’s artistic heritage; to emphasise the moral imperative of repairing the damage it had suffered; and to promote the restitution of artistic treasures as fundamental resources of the nation (Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia 1944).

Public exhibitions soon proved particularly effective in mobilising both awareness and financial support for reconstruction projects (Jiang 2025). Taking advantage of the opportunity to inspect artworks stored in the Vatican before their return to museums and galleries across Italy, the Association organised a major exhibition to showcase these masterpieces to a broad audience. In May 1945, the Mostra d’Arte Italiana (Exhibition of Italian Art) opened at Palazzo Venezia. Formerly a seat of Fascist authority, the Palazzo was deliberately chosen and symbolically repurposed for the occasion. The exhibition marked the first major cultural initiative conceived and carried out entirely by Italians since the outbreak of war, signalling a collective effort to reclaim cultural agency after years of occupation and dictatorship. As Zanotti Bianco (1945: Preface) explains in the exhibition catalogue, the aim was:

The exhibition’s title was itself carefully considered. The initial proposal was ‘Mostra di capolavori della pittura veneta e di opere d’arte di collezioni private romane’ (Exhibition of Masterpieces of Venetian Painting and Artworks from Roman Private Collections), but ultimately replaced by the title ‘Mostra d’Arte Italiana’. This change showed a deliberate emphasis on national identity and cultural unity at a moment of political and institutional transition (Vites 2023) (Figure 2).

Figure 2

The exhibition was organised into two main sections, presenting a total of 117 works drawn from both public and private collections, in line with the Association’s vision of fostering public–private collaboration. The first section, installed in the Barbo Apartment and three monumental halls, displayed 58 paintings from the Venetian school, primarily originating from northern Italy. The second section, housed in the Cybo Apartment, consisted of 59 privately owned works spanning different artistic schools and historical periods, drawn from some of Rome’s most esteemed private collections (Granata 2010). As the catalogue noted, private citizens were invited:

In addition to purchasing exhibition tickets, visitors were encouraged to join the Association either as ordinary members (1000 lire annually), or as meritorious patrons (10,000 lire annually) (Ciancabilla 2019). This two-tiered system sought to transform one-time attendance into sustained civic participation, aiming, as Zanotti Bianco (1945: Preface) put it:

Between 16 May and 4 June, in just under three weeks, the exhibition sold 9901 tickets and 3300 catalogues, generating a total venue of 361,822.50 lire (Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia 1945).

3.1 INTERNATIONAL ACTORS

Beyond the national and local levels, international actors played a role in the post-war reconstruction of Rome both in material reconstruction and in processes of national identity renewal after trauma. Wartime destruction catalysed new forms of transnational cooperation that operated alongside, yet were not fully aligned with, domestic priorities and narratives. The activities of international actors thus offer a lens through which to investigate how cultural heritage was used as a political instrument and acquired transnational meanings within the unstable geopolitical context of the early Cold War period.

Rome was liberated by the Allies on 4 June 1944. Italy’s shifting wartime allegiances placed the Allies in a complex position: they had carried out bombings across Rome and other Axis-held cities, and Fascist propaganda condemned them as aggressors of Italian cultural heritage (La guerra contro l’arte 1944). Yet, following the liberation, the Allies took charge of administering and protecting the country’s artistic and monumental heritage under the ACC in Rome.

Among the soldiers entering Rome was a special group: the Allied Sub-commission of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) officers. Established in 1943 as part of the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied Army, the MFA&A was tasked with a formidable mission: safeguarding Europe’s cultural heritage from the ravages of war and the threat of looting (Edsel & Witter 2009; Brinkley 2013). They created inventories and drafted maps for the protection of cultural heritage amid wartime bombing strategies. However, as Allais (2018) incisively pointed out, a paradox remained: to choose what to protect inevitably meant deciding what to destroy. This tension underscored the need for a new narrative in post-war reconstruction.

The MFA&A officers, recruited primarily from among leading American and British art historians, architects, artists, archaeologists and archivists, were carefully selected, specially trained and then dispatched to active war zones alongside other soldiers. Lieutenant Perry Blythe Cott, then on leave from the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, arrived in Rome on the very day of the city’s liberation, accompanied by his British colleague, regional archivist Thomas Humphrey Brooke. This integration of MFA&A officers with the liberation forces enabled the immediate implementation of emergency measures to safeguard Rome’s historic monuments and archival collections. Their early presence reflected the Allied recognition that cultural heritage was not a peripheral concern but a strategic asset in the political and moral reordering of post-war Europe. In this context, heritage protection functioned as an instrument of Allied cultural diplomacy, serving as a form of soft power that helped recast the Allies’ image from perceived aggressors into custodians of culture and civilisation (Roberts Commission—Protection of Historical Monuments 1946).

MFA&A officers worked closely with Italian superintendents and leveraged existing resources at foreign academies in Rome, such as the American Academy and the British School (Brennan 2011), thereby generating some of the earliest post-war transnational exchanges. An outcome of this fruitful network was the establishment of the ACRIM in Washington, DC, in the summer of 1946. Many MFA&A officers were actively involved. For example, Frederick Hartt served on the board of directors, and Perry Cott chaired the Committee on Circulating Exhibitions. Diplomat, art collector and philanthropist, Robert Woods Bliss, served as ACRIM’s president, with art historian Millard Meiss as vice-president. Charles Rufus Morey, cultural attaché at the US Embassy in Rome and the acting director of the American Academy in Rome was named honorary vice-president (ACRIM 1946a). These intellectual elites from Princeton, Harvard and other leading US institutions were united by the shared conviction that Italy’s monuments were not merely a national treasure but part of the ‘common patrimony of western civilization’ (Morey 1946: viii).

It is worth noting that many American scholars involved in the MFA&A and ACRIM specialised primarily in late antique and medieval Italian art and architecture, a background that oriented their attention toward historical continuity and artistic tradition more than the search for modernity in reconstruction.

3.2 FIFTY WAR-DAMAGED MONUMENTS OF ITALY

Building on its members’ experience of reconstruction challenges in post-war Italy, ACRIM mobilised its extensive American network through lectures, exhibitions, newspaper publicity, film programmes and fundraising campaigns organised by local chapters. In doing so, it cultivated a novel model of cultural philanthropy that brought together private donors, universities, museums and corporate foundations in support of the restoration of Italy’s war-damaged monuments. One of its most representative initiatives was the exhibition ‘War’s Toll of Italian Art’, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 18 October and 24 November 1946 (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Designed to convey to American audiences both the scale of destruction and the urgency of restoration, the exhibition unfolded in three sections: Protection, Damage and Repair, each narrating a different stage in the wartime fate of Italy’s cultural patrimony. The initiative itself exemplified a remarkable form of transnational collaboration. Photographers, museums and academic institutions across the United States lent materials to ACRIM, including the Frick Art Reference Library (Meiss 1946a). The Italian government contributed photographs collected by different regional superintendencies, as well as selected original works of art, while the National Association for the Restoration of Monuments Damaged by War actively promoted ACRIM’s work within Italy.

The exhibition featured approximately 80 large-format photographic panels, presented as ‘visual monographs’, each accompanied by detailed captions describing the artistic significance, historical context, and current condition of the monuments and artworks (Morgante 2013). Collectively, these images revealed the staggering toll of war on Italian cultural heritage. While about 70 monuments were documented in the show, the exhibition served as a stark reminder that over 2500 buildings in diverse types, along with countless frescoes and sculptural works, had suffered severe or irreparable damage (ACRIM 1946a). Rome was prominently represented: six photographs of the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura appeared in both the Damage and Repair sections (Figure 4). According to the exhibition’s pamphlet, ‘the front of the church, torn down by a bomb, was set up again by the combined efforts of the Allied military Government, the Italians and the Church’ (ACRIM 1946a).

Figure 4

The ideology underpinning the New York exhibition was very different from that of the 1945 exhibition in Rome. At the core of ACRIM’s campaigns was the assertion that Italian monuments were not merely a national treasure but part of the common patrimony of Western civilisation. As the Committee declared:

ACRIM actively promoted the notion of ‘One World friendship’, framing its fundraising appeals as an invitation for American citizens to participate in a shared moral responsibility:

These appeals went beyond philanthropy: they expressed an ideological commitment. The activities of ACRIM and its Italian counterparts helped to establish new protocols and networks, demonstrating that safeguarding monuments in moments of crisis required not only technical expertise but also a spirit of solidarity transcending national boundaries.

The appeal generated wide reverberations across the American public. Its opening drew nearly 2000 visitors, and over its five-week run it attracted 36,750 attendees (ACRIM 1946b). It subsequently toured 50 museums across the United States, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Art Institute of Chicago. By December 1947, ACRIM had deposited 4 million lire into an account of the Italian Ministry of Public Education (Ministero Pubblica Istruzione 1945–55). The exhibition’s success also catalysed broader fundraising initiatives beyond museum walls. A nationwide campaign was launched in the United States, featuring paid advertisements in major newspaper and magazines that encouraged tax-reducible donations. Corporate philanthropy also played a significant role, with institutions such as the Samuel H. Kress Foundation supporting reconstruction projects aligned with their interest in European art and architecture. Contributions were managed by a coordinating office in New York and later allocated to selected war-damaged monuments (Morgante 2013).

Once fundraising efforts gained momentum, a further challenge emerged: determining which monuments should be restored first, and on what grounds. In some cases, donors specified the projects they wished to support. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, for instance, funded high-profile restorations, including the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, the Ponte Santa Trinita in Florence and the Camposanto in Pisa. For many other projects, ACRIM worked in close coordination with Italian authorities to establish priorities for intervention (New York Times 1948).

The Italian Ministry of Public Education transmitted an initial list of 50 priority sites through Doro Levi, which Bianchi Bandinelli subsequently refined. Bianchi Bandinelli had set forth his own position on the kind of restoration that should be undertaken in a volume published by the National Association for the Restoration of Monuments Damaged by War for the American Committee, Fifty Monuments Damaged by the War (Cinquanta Monumenti Italiani danneggiati dalla guerra), issued in both English and Italian in 1947. Edited by Superintendent Emilio Lavagnino, the book drew on the rich photographic materials previously used in the New York exhibition and functioned as both a practical guide for funding allocation and a comprehensive visual record of wartime destruction. The book is organised alphabetically from Ancona to Viterbo and surveyed the nation’s cultural patrimony by documenting the extent of damage, historical significance, early restoration efforts and, in some cases, estimated financial costs for reconstruction.

As Meiss noted in a letter dated 20 October 1946:

In line with this approach, ACRIM recommended that the primary criteria for funding should be artistic and historic importance, with secondary considerations including geographical distribution, American interest and urgency of repair. On this basis, the first projects selected were the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, the Camposanto in Pisa, the Basilica of Vicenza and the Villa Falconieri in Frascati. By April 1948, the Italian government had accepted a series of grants, including US$8000 for the Bramante Portico at Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, US$5000 for the Basilica of Vicenza, US$2000 for the complete restoration of a house at Pompeii and US$5000 for the Villa Falconieri (ACRIM 1948).

4.1 DIVERSE ACTORS

The San Lorenzo district in northern Rome was among the areas most severely damaged during the Allied bombing of 19 July 1943, targeted because of its proximity to the city’s main railway station and nearby industrial infrastructure. Two stray bombs struck the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of Rome’s Seven Basilicas and the burial site of Pope Pius IX, inflicting a profound religious and cultural damage.

The basilica is a palimpsest of centuries of interventions, comprising two distinct yet conjoined parts. The older church, largely rebuilt under Pope Pelagius at the end of the sixth century, and the so-called ‘front’ church, whose origin remains uncertain but substantially altered during the pontificate of Pope Honorius III in the 13th century. During this time, the apses of both churches were demolished, and they were joined in such a way that the older church became the choir of a single, enlarged church. A porch by the Cosmatesque master Pietro Vassalletto, added c.1220, forms the principal entrance to the complex. In the 19th century, Virginio Vespignani carried out a radical restoration under Pius IX, significantly changing the medieval character of the interior.

On the day following the bombing, Pius XII visited the site, an act that underscored the basilica’s importance as both a sacred and a civic monument. First-aid measures commenced immediately. By 27 July 1943, the Superintendent of Monuments for Lazio had initiated debris clearance and removed movable artworks to safe storage. These early interventions revealed that the sixth-century basilica and its mosaic had survived intact, whereas the 13th-century narthex, the upper facade and the nave roof had been largely destroyed. While such first-aid measures helped prevent further deterioration, they also made evident that comprehensive restoration would require resources far beyond Italy’s already strained wartime capacity (Superintendent of Monuments of Lazio 1943).

In July 1944, a board of officers commissioned by the ACC surveyed the site, producing a systematic damage report (Hamblen 1944). Officers from the MFA&A unit worked closely with the Italian authorities, forwarding detailed assessments to the Civil Affairs Division of War Department in Washington, DC (Figure 5). After on-site inspections, on 19 August 1944 Brigadier-General Henry Carlton Newton reported on the condition of the basilica before the commencement of reconstruction work:

Figure 5

ACRIM provided financial support to the basilica in accordance with its list of selected war-damaged monuments. Within ACRIM’s three-tier classification, San Lorenzo was classified as ‘first preference’ within Group II (recommended for assistance). Fund distribution was coordinated through the General Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts under Bianchi Bandinelli, who corresponded directly with ACRIM to secure resources. It was estimated that an additional 24 million lire would be necessary to complete the restoration of the basilica, within a total 769 million lire estimated for 50 monuments (Italian Ministry of Public Education 1946). While ACRIM later reduced the amount compared with the sum requested by the Italian authorities, the precise grant allocated to San Lorenzo remains unknown. In close consultation with Morey, the Cultural Attaché of the US Embassy and the Director of the American Academy in Rome, the funds were transferred to the Italian Ministry of Public Education. In one letter, Bianchi Bandinelli (1947) expressed gratitude for the international support:

4.2 RECONSTRUCTION METHODOLOGIES: AS LIBERATION, DISTINGUISHABILITY AND MINIMAL INTERVENTION

With the gradual dissolution of the ACC in Rome, the technical responsibility for the reconstruction of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura passed into Italian hands. Between 1946 and 1950, Alberto Terenzio, Superintendent for Medieval Monuments in Lazio and a member of the National Association for the Restoration of Monuments Damaged by War, directed the comprehensive restoration and reconstruction of the basilica.

As work moved beyond emergency repair, the central issue became not whether to rebuild, but how—and to which historical state. Early debates centred on the critique of Virginio Vespignani’s 19th-century interventions, which many scholars regarded as aesthetically discordant and historically incompatible with the basilica’s Early Christian character. An anonymous superintendency report of 1943 first articulated this critique, later echoed by art historian Antonio Muñoz and subsequently by Guglielmo Matthiae, a leading scholar of Christian and medieval art (Muñoz 1944; Matthiae 1966). Terenzio shared this position: the post-war reconstruction aimed not to return the basilica to its pre-war appearance but rather to recover its Early Christian identity.

This decision was decisive to direct the reconstruction project. Wartime destruction provided the opportunity to dismantle Vespignani’s 19th-century additions, recover earlier fragments and recompose the medieval structure in line with a more ‘authentic’ image of antiquity. Bombing and structural collapses also exposed previously concealed elements of the ancient structures, some of them unexpected (Donatelli 2018). In this sense, destruction came to be understood as a form of ‘liberation’, and reconstruction proceeded not as a straightforward return to the past, but as a critical reassessment of the monument’s stratified history. At the Fifth National Conference of Architectural History in 1948, Guglielmo De Angelis d’Ossat described the wartime demolition of accretions, superimposed structures or even adjacent buildings that had concealed or diminished the appearance as ‘a true restoration by liberation, requiring nothing more than final finishing touches’ (De Angelis d’Ossat 1957: 27).

Terenzio’s restoration translated this conceptual stance into concrete architectural choices. The project reconstructed the roof using tiles specifically produced according to ancient models, reopened the medieval windows of the central nave that Vespignani had previously blocked, replaced the flooring entirely with terracotta tiles and substituted the 19th-century railing with a design derived from earlier forms. The collapsed facade was fully reconstructed without the 19th-century mosaic covering it, thereby returning the facade to its more austere medieval appearance. Decorative interventions focused on consolidating and carefully retouching medieval painted and mosaic surfaces, whereas no budget was allocated for the remnants of 19th-century decorative schemes.

This approach reflected a widespread post-war tendency to prioritise classical and medieval phases while systematically removing ‘modern’ interventions from the 17th to 19th centuries. Terenzio applied this approach consistently across multiple projects, accepting the idea of ‘liberation’ as the recovery of an historic building’s concealed aesthetic qualities from what were perceived as insignificant or obstructed additions. Similar methodologies appeared elsewhere in Italy. In Naples, for example, Roberto Pane’s approach to the church of Santa Chiara rejected reconstruction in its pre-war form in favour of conserving surviving medieval structures and completing the rest in modern architectural language. Such decisions reveal a deeper cultural orientation within the reconstruction practice. Reconstruction articulated a relationship between present and past. The selective choice of which historical layers to preserve, to recover or erase was therefore inseparable from questions of identity. In the case of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, and in post-war Italy more broadly, medieval history and architecture emerged as the preferred temporal anchor of cultural identity, serving for the redefinition of national heritage.

Once decisions had been made about which historical layers to preserve and which to remove, attention shifted to how to integrate new work into the historic fabric. The 1932 Carta Italiana del Restauro (Italian Restoration Charter) set out a fundamental principle: the character of bare simplicity and adherence to the construction scheme. This directive shaped Terenzio’s work and the San Lorenzo project realised the new additions in a ‘forme semplificate’ (simplified form). Surviving elements were preserved and made clearly distinguishable yet harmoniously integrated with newly reconstructed parts. Equally important was the principle of ‘minimum intervention’: reduce renewal interventions to the minimum necessary, guaranteeing the authenticity of the structures. For example, the chipping on the structural elements of the portico and at various points along the colonnade and entablature of the nave was intentionally left visible, as were the incomplete shape of several columns. The reintegration of the cornice and frieze of the portico was excreted with simplified mouldings and a smooth surface. A thin layer of plaster was applied to fill the areas where the mosaic had been lost (Figure 6). In this way, the trace of wartime damage remains identifiable even after the restoration, and the new interventions are easily distinguishable from the old ones.

Figure 6

The interior of the basilica required substantial structural consolidation to realign inclined walls and stabilise the columns. Modern technologies and materials were employed with great caution. For instance, a reinforced concrete curb, clad in brick masonry (mattonata) was inserted along the perimeter of the central nave, while the choir floor slab was likewise rebuilt in reinforced concrete and brick. These measures ensured structural stability while maintaining coherence in form with the historic fabric.

4.3 DESTRUCTION AS CATALYST

The wartime bombing of San Lorenzo, though catastrophic, became an unexpected catalyst for new discoveries. Near the ambo of the Gospel, structural collapse exposed a section of an underlying cemetery gallery, prompting systematic archaeological investigations during the reconstruction works. These campaigns were jointly directed by Enrico Josi of the Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, Richard Krautheimer of Vassar College and art historian Wolfgang Frankl of Corpus Basilicarum. Funding came not only from the Pontifical Commission but also from American institutions, notably the American Philosophical Society through its Penrose Fund and Vassar College (Krautheimer et al. 1952).

Excavations began in June–July 1947 and continued through the autumn of 1948. Krautheimer, who also served on the committee of ACRIM, played a pivotal role, exemplifying the transnational dimension of post-war scholarship. The excavations beneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo revealed a rich stratigraphy that profoundly deepened the understanding of both the site itself and Rome’s broader Christian topography. The excavations uncovered portions of the late antique catacomb network, including burial galleries from the earliest centuries of Christianity, alongside architectural remains predating the Carolingian and medieval reconstructions. Funerary inscriptions and sarcophagi confirmed the site’s continuous use as a cemetery church and its association with the cult of St Lawrence, which reinforced the historical prestige of the site as a locus of early Christian memory.

In this sense, the excavations not only illuminated otherwise inaccessible layers of Rome’s sacred past but also transformed the wartime devastation into an opportunity for renewed scholarly enquiry and a richer archaeological record. Conducted in parallel with structural stabilisation works, the project became an early model for integrating archaeological research with architectural restoration, incorporating purpose-built protective structures that allowed selected excavated areas to remain visible and accessible. San Lorenzo thus came to symbolise a new paradigm: while war precipitated irreparable losses, it also generated new forms of knowledge.

4.4 FROM NATIONAL EFFORTS TO INTERNATIONAL IMPACT

The reconstruction of war-damaged monuments such as the Basilica of San Lorenzo exemplified the growing authority and sophistication of Italian expertise in cultural heritage conservation. The post-war landscape presented a complex array of challenges that made it impossible to follow a single, prescriptive method or to adhere rigidly to the previous scientific principles. Instead, Italian professionals were compelled to reassess existing methods and develop more flexible, context-sensitive approaches. This moment of crisis encouraged debate and innovation, fostering a case-by-case practice. Italian experts navigated between fidelity to the established guidelines such as the Carta Italiana del restauro (1932) with practical and interpretive judgement, ensuring that each monument was treated as a unique instance of historical and artistic significance.

Several factors underpinned the remarkable success of these post-war works: the high level of professional training among Italian technical experts, particularly within superintendencies and the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (Central Institute for Restoration); the extraordinary skills of local craftsmen; and the intellectual adaptability of restorers who were able to balance theoretical rigor with on-site realities. Building on the theoretical tradition of Camillo Boito, whose work sought to mediate between modernity and historical continuity, Italian practitioners developed a ‘third way’ between Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s stylistic restoration and John Ruskin’s anti-restoration. Through post-war practice, they advanced a modern conservation ethic that aims to balance historical authenticity with structural and aesthetic coherence.

It is important to note that this expertise did not develop in isolation. It emerged through sustained transnational exchange, facilitated by foreign funding, international scholarly collaboration and the persistent attention of an external gaze directed toward Italy’s cultural heritage. As De Angelis d’Ossat (1945) asserts, post-war reconstruction was about restoring monuments as well as shaping Italy’s future by strengthening cultural and economic ties with abroad.

Indeed, monuments such as San Lorenzo were actively promoted in the US through exhibitions, publications and fundraising campaigns, situating Italian reconstruction within broader narratives of shared cultural responsibility. The methodological advances forged in these immediate post-war years—rigorous documentation, clear distinguishability between old and new fabric, and context-sensitive decision-making—soon resonated far beyond Italy. They directly informed the drafting of the 1964 Venice Charter, which codified international standards for conservation and remains a cornerstone of global heritage practice. Seen in this light, post-war reconstruction provides a critical lens for understanding how Italy came to occupy a position of authority in international heritage discourse in the decades that followed.