ITALIAN TRIPOLI (LIBYA)

This month I am going to research the "Italian Tripoli", capital of Italian Libya from 1911 to 1947. Italian Tripoli was the capital of "Italian Libya". During the early XX century the city of Tripoli was under Italian control for 3 decades, that lasted from 1911 until January 1943. Italians conquered the town of less than 20,000 inhabitants from the Ottoman empire and enlarged it in 1943 to a big city of nearly 120,000 "Tripolini" (more than half Italians), creating a vibrant and modern capital in north Africa.

The census of 1939 showed this population in Tripoli:
Town...... Italians....... Arabs........ Jews........ Total
Tripoli... 47,442......... 47,123...... 18,467......113,212

Italian Tripoli was at the center of Italian NorthAfrica in the "Greater Italy" during WW2 (borders in orange color).With Decree of 9 January 1939 the four provinces of Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi and Derna were aggregated to the Kingdom of Italy, becoming an integral part of the Italian metropolitan territory.

History

During the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 Tripoli was conquered by the Italian Kingdom. The Italian fleet appeared off Ottoman Tripoli in the evening of September 28, 1911: the city was quickly conquered by 1,500 Italian sailors, welcomed by the population (https://archive.org/details/tripoliitalianal00mart/page/36/mode/2upTripoli inhabitants welcomed the Italians; p. 36-40). The huge jewish community of Tripoli was very supportived of the Italian occupation (http://archive.diarna.org/site/detail/public/1784/).

TRIPOLI ITALIANA: The Grand Hotel, built in the early 1930

With the 1912 treaty signed in Ouchy, Italian sovereignty was acknowledged by the Ottomans, although the local Caliph was permitted to exercise religious authority. Italy officially granted autonomy after the war, but gradually occupied the region of Tripolitania. Originally administered as part of a single colony, Tripoli and its surrounding province were a separate colony from 26 June 1927 to 3 December 1934, when all Italian possessions in North Africa were merged into one colony called ''Libia''.

Since 1937 the governor Italo Balbo started a policy of immigration of Italians (mainly farmers) who were called the Ventimilli and some of them settled in the area of Italian Tripoli (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_jA9rzM1MsVideo of Italian settlers arriving in the port of Tripoli).

Fiat train "Littorina" at Tripoli station

So, by the end of 1937, the city had 108,240 inhabitants, including 39,096 Italians (according to The Statesman's Yearbook 1948. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 1040). At the start of WWII Italian Tripoli had 111,124 inhabitants of which the Italians were 41,304: 37% of the city's inhabitants. Additionally there were nearly 18,000 Jews in the Tripoli area. Indeed after the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, the Jews made great strides in education and economic conditions: at that time, there were about 21,000 Jews in the country, the majority in Tripoli. In the late 1930s, Fascist anti-Jewish laws were gradually enforced, and Jews were subject to moderate repression: still, by late 1940 -due even to the partial rejection of those laws by governor Italo Balbo- the Jews accounted for a fifth of the population of Tripoli and maintained 44 synagogues.

In 1942 Tripoli -according to estimates of the Italian government (Istituto Agricolo Coloniale (Firenze); Ministero degli Esteri, 1946)- reached a temporary population of nearly 150,000 inhabitants, due to the arrival of many Italians from Benghazi and Cyrenaica who took refuge from the British army attacks during WWII. As a consequence Tripoli was in that year -for the first time since the Arab conquest in 643 AD- a city mostly Christian.

Fiera internazionale di Tripoli ("Tripoli International Fair") in 1939

Architectural and Urbanistic improvement of Italian Tripoli

Tripoli underwent a huge architectural and urbanistic improvement under Italian rule (http://www.fedoa.unina.it/1881/1/Santoianni_Progettazione_Architettonica.pdf Tripoli section: p. 54-59). The first thing the Italians did was to create in the early 1920s a sewage system (that until then lacked) with water & electrical facilities to all the city and a modern hospital. Also was started the creation of the modern port.

Furthermore, in the western section of Tripoli was created an industrial area in the 1930s, around a huge tobacco factory (called "Manufattura Tabacchi di Tripoli"), with railway workshops, Fiat Motor works, various food processing plants, electrical engineering workshops, ironworks, water plants, agricultural machinery factories, breweries, distilleries, biscuit factories, tanneries, bakeries, lime, brick and cement works.

Governor Balbo used to say that "We Italians found in 1911 a big village of approximately 20,000 inhabitants called Tripoli and now we have in 1940 a modern capital nearly ten times bigger and one of the most developed and vibrant cities of Africa". (photos of Tripoli: http://www.paolocason.eu/Viaggio%20a%20Tripoli.htm ).

In the coast of the province was built in 1937-1938 a section of the Litoranea Balbia, a road that went from Tripoli and Tunisia's frontier to the border of Egypt. The car tag for the Italian province of Tripoli was "TL" (Berionne, Michele. "Libia (1937-1943)" Italian car tags )

Furthermore the Italians - in order to promote Tripoli's economy - founded in 1927 the "Tripoli International Fair", which is considered to be the oldest Trade Fair in Africa (http://tripolifair.com/tripoli-international-fair/ Tripoli International Fair brief history). The so-called Fiera internazionale di Tripoli was one of the main international "Fairs" in the colonial world in the 1930s, and was internationally promoted together with the Tripoli Grand Prix as a showcase of Italian Libya(http://cronologia.leonardo.it/storia/a1937f.htm Filippo Giannini: Colonial Italy and Islam (in Italian).

Italian Tripoli's Via Generale De Bono in 1933

Indeed the Italians even created the "Tripoli Grand Prix", an international motor racing event first held in 1925 on a racing circuit outside Tripoli that lasted until 1940 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEtz-wzbs9YVideo of Tripoli Grand Prix).Tripoli during the Grand Prix was visited by the elite tourism of the world and had even some "fashion" shops (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/187040190754209597/ Italian women walking near the Tripoli Castle in 1939).

The first airport in Libya, the "Mellaha Air Base" was built by the Italian Air Force in 1923 near the Tripoli racing circuit (actually is called "Mitiga International Airport"). The regular air services (with postal services) in Libya began in November 1928 with the first Rome-Syracuse-Tripoli air route, three times a week in winter, daily in summer, of the "Societa Anonima Navigazione Aerea (SANA)" airplanes. In the December of 1931 the "Società Nord Africa Aviazione (NAA)" inaugurated the Benghazi-Agedabia-Sirte-Tripoli line, which followed the coast line. With the absorption of the two companies from the ''Ala Littoria'' in 1935 the service continued on the same routes. From 4 April 1937 the Rome-Tunis line of Ala Littoria was extended to Tripoli; in 1938 the Air France opened a Marseilles-Tripoli line, then extended to Benghazi and Damascus. (www.academia.edu/2326842/ Le Poste italiane fuori dI'talia).

Tripoli had even a modern railway station with some small railway connections to nearby cities, when in August 1941 the Italians started to build a new 1,040 kilometres (646 miles) railway (with a 1,435 mm (56.5 in) gauge, like the one used in Egypt and Tunisia) between Tripoli and Benghazi. But the war -with the defeat of the Italian Army- stopped the construction the next year: only one hundred miles were created, but it was done also the project to connect this new railway with the borders of Tunisia & Egypt.

Banca d'Italia in 1932

Tripoli was controlled by Italy until 1943 when the provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were captured by Allied forces. The city fell to troops of the British Eighth Army on 23 January 1943 and the Italian colonists since then started to diminish (the following photo shows a family of farm colonists with British soldiers).

Tripoli was then governed by the British until independence in 1951. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya.

After WWII the era of international decolonization fostered a huge exodus of Italians from Tripoli (http://intranet.istoreto.it/esodo/parola.asp?id_parola=25https://books.google.com/books?id=ax0EpcZqeMkC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=gheddafi+expulsion+of+italians&source=bl&ots=OYfkJX6Gd-&sig=7jgJ5We-toLe59m-eIyoYaBjjik&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PMEyVJnpE9C8ggSbzYGIBg#v=onepage&q=gheddafi%20expulsion%20of%20italians&f=false. Gaddafi expulsion of the Italians in 1970).

At present, the Libyan Italians are organized in the Associazione Italiani Rimpatriati dalla Libia (. http://www.airl.it Associazione Italiani Rimpatriati dalla Libia). The remaining "Tripolini" struggle to get their confiscated properties (http://www.airl.it/la-nostra-storia#eventistorici History of the Italian refugees from Gheddafi Libya) and even to maintain their Italian cemetery (www.corriere.it/esteri/16_aprile_10/cimitero-italiano-tripoli-sterpaglie-croci-divelte-devastazioni-70e3480c-ff61-11e5-a032-8e8dfe3b8a86.shtml Attacks on the Tripoli Italian Cemetery)

Infrastructures

Since the first years in Italian Tripoli were made many infrastructures by the Italians, even with the participation of the local arab "elite" (Journal of Libyan Studies 3, 1 (2002) p. 59-68: "Local Elites and Italian Town Planning Procedures in Early Colonial Tripoli (1911-1912)" by Denis Bocquet and Nora Lafi). The most important were the coastal road (called "Via Balbia" in honor of Italo Balbo after his death in 1940) between Tripoli and Benghazi and the railways Tripoli-Zuara, Tripoli-Garian and Tripoli-Tagiura.

The Cathedral of Tripoli (in the 1960s.

Other important infrastructures were the enlargement of the port of Tripoli with the addition of a seaplane facility and the creation of the Tripoli airport (later in the 1930s was added another "international" airport in nearby Castel Benito).

The first modern hospital in Tripoli was created by the Italians: the "Tripoli Central Hospital" main buildings that are standing now were built during the Italian administration of Libya in the 1910s. It was known then as L'Ospedale Coloniale di Vittorio Emanuele III (or Vittorio Emanuele III Colonial Hospital). The service during those days used to be headed by Italian doctors: notable among them was Tomaso Casoni (1880–1933) who practiced there from 1912 to 1932. He described there a test for diagnosing hydatid disease based on "dermal hypersensitivity", known internationally after him as the Casoni test. The original building is still standing and is occupied by the hospital's surgery department.

Since 1912 the Italian authorities started creating a "city plan", that was one of the first in the world to respect the ancient medieval city called "medina" (without demolitions of old buildings): it was decided to create a new modern city outside the Ottoman walls (http://www.fedoa.unina.it/1881/1/Santoianni_Progettazione_Architettonica.pdf Section: Tripoli, un centro di sperimentazione urbanistica e architettonica, p. 104). Tripoli city plan and architectural development by Italy). The city of Tripoli underwent a huge transformation in those years, with the creation of new avenues, squares, sea promenades and modern buildings like -to name a few worldwide famous- the modern "Palazzo delle Poste" and the "Palazzo Previdenza Sociale".

Lungomare Badoglio in 1940

From the central square "Piazza Italia", located just south of the old castle and medina, were created huge boulevards, like Corso Sicilia and Lungomare Badoglio (above is the photo of Lungomarfe Baxoglio in 1940), Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, Via Roma, Via Lazio, Via Piemonte and Via Lombardia around which new Italian-style modern buildings were developed. The buildings of the "Cassa di risparmio della Tripolitania" and of the "Banca d'Italia" were created as masterpieces of rationalist style (and are still used by the Central Bank of Libya).

In Tripoli was built in 1928 the biggest catholic cathedral of north Africa: the "Tripoli Cathedral". Italian government even restructured the ancient "Arch of Marcus Aurelius".

Indeed immediately after the Italian conquest, this Roman monument (related to M. Aurelius) received conservation and restoration work from the Italian administration, while the zone around the arch was reorganized by the Italian architect Florestano Di Fausto in the early 1930s. Governor Balbo gave Di Fausto in 1938 the task of designing the city plan of Italian Tripoli, and Di Fausto, nominated by Balbo chef of the "Commission for Urban Protection and Esthetics", with the main task of designing Tripoli's city plan, started to produce a stream of projects for Libya's capital: there the architect outlined the plan of Piazza Castello (the area around the Red Castle) and of the square around the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, in the Medina. Moreover, he erected public buildings, churches, markets, hotels, totaling fifteen works in few years(http://www.artefascista.it/tripoli__fascismo__architettu.htm Architecture in Tripoli created during Fascism Architecture in Tripoli created during Fascism).

"Piazza Italia" with Italian Renaissance style fountain and buildings

His masterpiece in Tripoli was the multifunctional center "Al Waddan" (hotel, swimming pools, casino, theater), characterized by a long row of arches parallel to today's Sharia al Fatah promenade: it was one of the predecessors of "modern malls". Indeed the actual Al Waddan opened in 1936 as the "Uaddan Hotel & Casino", just east of the Grand Hotel Tripoli (now destroyed as it was when originally built in 1925). Historically it was the grandest hotel in Tripoli and was referenced by an American journalist as being "the Waldorf Astoria of Tripoli" and was also named "a jewel of modern African architecture" (Segrè, Claudio G. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life. University of California Press. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-520-07199-5). It contained a casino and a 500 seat theatre. Di Fausto also created the famous "Hotel Del Mehari", built in 1935 at the same time as the nearby Hotel Casinò Uaddan. According to Brian McLaren in his book Architecture and tourism in Italian colonial Libya (https://books.google.com/books?id=_lrYlxdX7DIC&pg=PA194#v=onepage&q&f=false), the (destroyed after WW2) Mehari hotel "provided a fusion of the indigenous architecture of Tripoli with a modern aesthetic that responded to the demand for a metropolitan standard of comfort, typical to colonial tourism" In all these works, the architect Di Fausto resumed his Romano-Greek experience, mixing with great virtuosity arabisant and novecento elements.

Even the modern futuristic "Church of Saint Francis" in downtown Tripoli was another work of art of him. The same residence of Governor Balbo was to become after WWII the "Royal Palace" of the Libya's king. Balbo even promoted the creation of an international airport at "Castel Benito" (now called Tripoli International Airport), connected by the first international flights in Africa to Italy and to Ethiopia's Addis Abeba. The Red Castle Museum was established in 1919, when the colonial Italians in Libya converted a section of the Tripoli's ancient castle to a museum to house many of the archaeological artifacts scattered across the country since prehistoric times. The square around the castle was designed in the thirties by architect Di Fausto as "Piazza Castello" and was integrated with nearby "Piazza Italia" and the disappeared "Lungomare Conte Volpi".

In 1939 was created the '7 October Stadium', a grass football stadium called initially "Stadio Comunale di Tripoli" and based in the center of the city. The stadium was initially made for 5,000 people and was used even for athletism and cyclism sports. It was the only football stadium in Tripoli before the June 11 Stadium was built in the 1970s.

The "Palazzo del Governatore" of Balbo, remodeled as Royal Palace in the 1950s

The Piazza Italia (now called Martyr's Square) featured on one side a wide avenue leading towards the seafront with two tall pillars. On top of the pillars still there are an iron-cast, miniature wooden ship on the norther corner, while the other one features a horseback rider. On the Piazza's other side there was the Teatro Miramare, called later Royal Miramare Theatre: it used to be located across from the Red Castle Museum, but it was demolished by Gaddafi's government after the 1960s to create space for large demonstrations. Another important building demolished by dictator Gheddafi was the Tripoli railway station, built in 1937. It was the only railway station in Africa served by the state-of-the-art "Littorina" (an Italian passenger train that obtained the world record of speed in 1939 with the model FS Class ETR 200).

Additionally, a group of villages for Italians and Libyans were created on the coastal tripolitania around Italian Tripoli during the 1930s. They were like satellite towns and interacted with Tripoli (http://www.qattara.it/balbia_files/Opere%20italiane%20in%20Africa.pdf Photos of Italian works in Libya and of the new villages created for Italians and Libyans). In 1939 the most important created and populated only by native arabs and berbers (who received by governor Italo Balbo the Italian citizenship in the newly created "Quarta Sponda" or "Fourth Shore of Italy") were: "El Fager" (al-Fajr, Alba in Italian language), "Nahima" (Deliziosa), "Azizia" (‘Aziziyya, Meravigliosa), "Nahiba" (Risorta), "Mansura" (Vittoriosa), "Chadra" (khadra, Verde), "Zahara" (Zahra, Fiorita), "Gedida" (Jadida, Nuova), "Mamhura" (Fiorente).

All the villages in the outskirts of Tripoli since 1939 were connected daily by bus service to the "Stazione centrale autobus" (one of the first central bus stations in north Africa), located in the square of the Tripoli Railway Station.

Corso Vittorio Emanuele in 1936

LINKS

1)"Atlante delle colonie italiane". Detailed Atlas of Italian colonies, written by Baratta Mario and Visintin Luigi in 1928 (https://historica.unibo.it/explore?bitstream_id=767002&handle=20.500.14008/78925&provider=iiif-image&viewer=mirador)
2)Italian senate photo archive: Tripoli (https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com/luce-web/search/result.html?query=&jsonVal=%7B%22jsonVal%22%3A%7B%22query%22%3A%5B%22tripoli+%22%5D%2C%22fieldDate%22%3A%22dataNormal%22%2C%22_perPage%22%3A20%7D%7D&activeFilter=temi&luoghi=%22Tripoli%22&activeFilter=luoghi)
3)Italo Balbo: LA COLONIZZAZIONE DEMOGRAFICA IN LIBIA (1939) ( http://epa.oszk.hu/02500/02510/00033/pdf/EPA02510_corvina_1939_04_281-291.pdfhttp://epa.oszk.hu/02500/02510/00033/pdf/EPA02510_corvina_1939_04_281-291.pdf )
4)Video of Tripoli in 1936 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kU8WsW2Eiw)
5)Video of "Fiera di Tripoli" in 1939 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTFIvuUb9eo)

ITALIAN RODI

THe Kingdom of Italy conquered the Dodecanese islands during the 1911/1912 war against the Ottoman Empire.The main island of this Aegean sea's archipelago was the island of Rodi (called also "Rhodes" in english) with the capital (or main city) "citta' di Rodi". Here it is my research about this city and its island:

Surrender of the Turkish garrison in Rhodes near Psithos to the Italian general Giovanni Ameglio on 16 May 1912 (as appeared in the magazine "Domenica del Corriere" on June 1912)

The island of Rodi gradually declined during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance centuries, as the result of pestilence, emigration, wars with harsh Turkish administration and also because later suffering severely during the War of Greek Independence (1821–29).

The Italians conquered an island in very bad conditions, without sewages and hospitals. But soon started to improve the island, mainly the capital.

With the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 the Dodecanese (with Rodi) was officially annexed by Italy, as the ''Possedimenti Italiani dell'Egeo''.

The landing of Itaian troops in 1911 Rodi

In the 1930s Mussolini embarked on a program of "Italianization", hoping to make the island od Rodi a modern transportation hub that would serve as a focal point for the spread of Italian culture in Greece and Levant. The Fascist program did have some positive effects in its attempts to modernize the islands, resulting in the eradication of malaria, the construction of hospitals, aqueducts, a power plant to provide Rhodes' capital with electric lighting and the establishment of the Dodecanese Cadastre.

The main castle of the Knights of St. John was also rebuilt in Rodi city. The concrete-dominated Fascist architectural style integrated significantly with the islands' picturesque scenery (and also reminded the inhabitants of Italian rule), but has consequently been largely demolished or remodeled, apart from the famous example of the Leros town of Lakki, which remains a prime example of this architecture.

From 1923 to 1936 governor Mario Lago was able to integrate the Greek, Turkish and Ladino Jewish communities of the island of Rhodes with the Italian colonists, obtaining a so called "Golden Period" in the Italian Dodecanese with the economy and the society enjoying huge developments and harmony (https://www.dodecaneso.org/content/storia-egeo-1912-1943/ The "golden years" of governor Lago, in Italian).

From 1936 to 1940 Cesare Maria De Vecchi acted as governor of the Italian Aegean Islands promoting the official use of the Italian language and favoring a process of italianization, interrupted by the beginning of WWII.
In the 1936 Italian census of the Dodecanese islands, the total population was 129,135, of which 7,015 were Italians. Nearly 80% of the Italian colonists lived in the island of Rhodes, where there was an important Italian naval base. Aproximately 40,000 Italian soldiers and sailors were on military duty in the Dodecanese islands in 1940.

During World War II, Italy joined the Axis Powers, and used the Dodecanese as a naval staging area for its invasion of Crete in 1940. After the Armistice in September 1943, the islands briefly became a battleground between the Nazi Germans and the Italians. The Germans prevailed and although they were driven out of mainland Greece in 1944, the Dodecanese remained occupied until the end of the war in 1945, during which time nearly the entire Jewish population of 6,000 was deported and killed. Only 1200 of these Ladino speaking Jews survived, thanks to their lucky escape to the nearby coast of Turkey with some help from the Italian colonists of Rhodes.

There were 3 periods of the Italian presence in Rhodes: the first after the occupation in 1911 and until the treaty with the official annexation & Turkish renounce to the Dodecanese islands.; the second under Mario Lago rule and the third under the one of De Vecchi until the beginning of WW2.

Map of italian Dodecaneso in 1936

Three years later (1943), after the fall of Mussolini and the capitulation of Badolio, the Germans would take over the islands ending formally the Italian presence & rule on the islands after more than thirty years.

Actually the citadel of Rhodes city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, thanks in great part to the large-scale restoration work done by the Italian authorities in what was "Rodi italiana" from 1912 to 1943.

Here there it is a resumen of two periods -under Lago & De Vecchi- when the Italian presence was very strong and noteworthy:

MARIO LAGO PERIOD (1923-1936)

During this period, there was a radical change in the nature of the Italian domination in the Dodecanese owing to the Italian de jure occupation and the ascend of Mussolini to power. We should also mention that the identification of this period with one person is nothing but coincidental. The governor had very broad legislative, administrative and judicatory jurisdiction.

This period is characterized by the attempt to Italianize the islanders. In fact, with the Royal Decree of December 15, 1925, the islanders were considered Italian citizens with Dodecanesian nationality and were not required to do military service. With the 1926 school regulation, the educational system changed: communal schools were no longer under the superintendence of the Orthodox Church, teaching the Italian language became mandatory and a School for teacher training would also be founded. In 1929, studying – or post-graduate studies – at the University of Pisa became mandatory for the exercise of a profession requiring university studies. That was also accompanied by scholarships for Dodecanesian students. Similarly, they intervened in Church affairs with an unsuccessful attempt to found an autonomous Church of the Dodecanese and reinforce the position of the Roman Catholic Church. The Italians introduced in the Dodecanese the fascist youth organizations, while they intended to Italianize names. To a great extent, those measures were aimed at forming and imposing an Italian Dodecanesian identity in juxtaposition to the Greek.

A series of legislative regulations dealt a crushing blow to the traditional agricultural economy (still in the Middle Ages!) of the islands, such as the 1924 forestall law, which imposed numerous restraints on cultivation privileges and made appropriating land from the State easier. This deteriorated farmers’ position and often led to their proletarianization.

Save rebuilding the economy with the invasion of Italian businesses, Italian planning was mostly aimed at developing tourism. In 1933, 200,000 brochures and 30,000 tourist guides were printed in four languages. At the same time, 11 shipping companies connected the Dodecanese (mostly Rhodes) with the entire Mediterranean Sea.

Rodi's famous "Grande Albergo delle Rose" in 1930

Though the numbers reported by several sources differ greatly from each other, there is no doubt that the migratory wave increased immensely during the Italian Rule. Migration was caused mainly by socio-economic factors, but it was encouraged by the favorable stance of the Italian authorities intending to establish Italian colonists in the place of emigrants. Their efforts had mixed results, since in 1936 Italians in the Dodecanese were no more than 16,711, most of whom had settled on Rhodes and Leros. Italians of Rhodes and Kos were farmers and had settled at new settlements organized as farming businesses. Those of Leros generally worked for the army and lived at the facilities of the city of Porto Lago at Lakki.

What marked the Italian Rule in the Dodecanese though was their activity in town planning. Besides, Lago himself would call this remarkable zoning, planning and building activity aimed at the colonization of places “stone policy

Their interference in town planning was not of the same extent on all islands. On Rhodes, Kos and Leros it was quite significant, defining up to now the character of these islands. On the rest of the islands, they only constructed middle-sized command posts and public service buildings dominating the ports. In May 1923, architect Florestano di Fausto was called from Rome in order to design anew the city of Rhodes. After the 1933 earthquake, the city of Kos was designed anew by Rodolfo Petracco. He also designed Porto Lago at Lakki of Leros, the only newly founded city. All of this interference in town planning was followed by the construction of imposing buildings and significantly improved the urban net. It was all based on extended practically inexpensive mandatory expropriations of building plots and residences.

Colonization policy was not limited in cities. A series of controversial decrees also changed the uses of land and its forms. Characteristic examples are the 1924 forestall law and the establishment of land register. The first one benefited impressively the environment but also damaged the agricultural economy. The latter organized and rationalized the uses of land but also became the medium for extensive changes of ownership.

Bank of Italy building (now Bank of Greece), created by Di Fausto

DE VECCHI PERIOD (1936-1940)

As the fascist regime became harsher with the declaration of the empire (imperio), Lago was substituted for tetrarch fascist Cesare de Vecchi. He became governor and had both political and military power. De Vecchi’s main goal was radical italianization and institutional modernization of the islands. Therefore, he imposed radical changes in education with the new school regulation (July 21 1937), which practically established the total domination of the Italian language at schools (teaching Greek was only optional and with no books in the first classes of primary school).

Moreover, the system of administration, balancing between the traditional “ communal” system and the modernizing expectations of Italian fascism, altered significantly in 1937, when new mayors were appointed, the podesta, directly depended from the governor. The racist law for the preservation of the purity of the Italian race was also introduced in 1938. At the same time, a series of decrees imposed absolute equalization with the Italian law.
Rodi was linked to Italy by a regular air service since the mid 1930s. The "Aero Espresso Italiana" (AEI) had flight from Brindisi to Athens and Rodi with flying boats (AEI used mainly the "Savoia 55", but also the "Macchi 24bis"), as can be seen in the following propaganda poster:

Mixed courts of orthodox, muslim and Jews were abolished and their cases were heard in modern civil courts. Concluding contracts and issuing certificates came from religious communities under State services.

De Vecchi didn’t make any new development plans; he just carried out those of his predecessor, whom he accused of being “ orientalist” among others. His loathing for what he thought was of “orientalist style” made him change the exterior of buildings. Their façades were covered with pietra finta lime-cast (Italian for “fake stone” ). It was a mixture of cement with sinter powder, similar in color and texture to the sinter of the buildings of the Knights’ era. Such examples are the Hotel of the Roses and the Court House, which were radically changed.

The few buildings constructed were characterized by the monumental fascist architecture aiming to inspire awe and respect among residents. This period ended when Italy entered the war.

Rodi's Teatro Puccini, when just built in 1937

ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE IN RODI

Although the Italians landed on the island of Rodi in 1912 during their conflict with the Ottoman Empire, most of their architectural works on Rhodes were carried out during the era of Mussolini (who took power a decade later) and reflect the attitude of his fascist regime toward urban space. The past – the ancient past as much ass the Middle Ages & the Renaissance – became raw material for fascist rhetoric, as Dr. Medina Lasansky pointed out in her book “The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle & Tourism in Fascist Italy.”

In the 1920s and 30s many leading architects, archaeologists, historians and city planners of Rome collaborated to showcase ancient monuments and historic sites of the former Roman Empire in the light of the Duce’s vision of modern Italy as a metropolitan power center. Public spaces, commercial facilities, churches, theaters, bridges, schools, sports facilities, villages and entire cities were either built or restored in Italy, as well as in the Italian territories in the Aegean and northern and eastern Africa. The central motif for this extensive building program was antiquity, both on a theoretical and practical level, and its apparent aim was the promotion of Fascism.

Family of an Italian "carabinieri" who was a farmer colonist in the outskirts of Rodi in 1941

The aesthetics of this movement were not uniform, as the ruling Italians appointed to their ranks and glorified, on a case by case basis, ultra-modernists, rationalists, neo-historians and representatives of the "Novecento". However, the main thrust of everyone involved was the “cleansing” (or “liberation,” as they called it) of the past. < Thus, the restoration and/or reconstruction of the traces of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance included their redesign – their selective representation carried out according to a specific viewpoint, one that fit the regime and its values. Whether in Rome, Tuscany, Rhodes or Libya, the regime’s architects were summoned to create a “purified version" of the past that would extol the present. The first civilian governor of the Italian Islands of the Aegean, and the one who left the most lasting impression on Rhodes, was the diplomat Mario Lago (1924-1936), who led his country’s efforts to impose Italian culture and to alter the ethnic make-up of the local population, while simultaneously attempting to banish the Greek language, culture and Orthodox religion.

Lago erected many public buildings; undertook numerous beautification projects in Rhodes’ historical center; restored medieval monuments; founded rural settlements; and adopted economic reforms – including measures to promote tourism. He was a pioneer in his time. Perhaps his most important legacy is the master plan he instituted for the city of Rhodes, which was comparable to those adopted in all the major cities of the West. During Lago’s tenure, the monuments of the "Citta' vecchia" (in English "Old Town") were identified and protected; all the land in the immediate area around the city walls was declared a “zona monumentale” (monument zone) and construction came under tight controls. Large areas (e.g., the Ottoman cemeteries) were forcibly seized for reasons of public interest, while the new town established outside the walls followed the popular Italian model of the garden city, endowed with a modern infrastructure, including roads, water and sewer systems, street lighting and administrative and military buildings.

Photo of the first Stadium in the Dodecanese islands: the "Arena del Sole", created in 1932 just outside the old walls in Rodi city.

Most of the projects completed during this period bear the stamp of Fiorestano di Fausto (1890-1965), the most important architect of fascist Italy. In the space of three years (1923-1926), and before he suffered a rift with Governor Lago, Di Fausto had designed or redesigned an astonishing fifty buildings in the Dodecanese – houses, public buildings, churches, markets, schools, barracks – of which thirty-two had been completed or were under construction in 1927.
Among the achievements that can still be admired today are the Foro Italico, the city’s new administrative center atMandraki and the Italian (formerly Ottoman) Club, a lounge for Italian officers and senior civil servants. The Courthouse was restored in a style clearly influenced by Renaissance architecture. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saint John (known today as the Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation), with its characteristic bell tower and its famed sarcophagi of the Great Magistrates, was built in the New Town as a replica of an older, Hospitallers-era church destroyed in 1856. Other buildings include the Maritime Administration and the "Grand Hotel of the Roses", with its distinctive dome, which continues to operate as a hotel and which constitutes one of the major landmarks of touristic Rhodes. Equally important was the Italians’ conservation work in the Old Town, especially their intervention at the "Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes", which they restored and turned into a museum (it remains one today). Notable, too, are the archaeological surveys, excavations and restoration works carried out by the Italians at several sites in Rhodes, mainly at Ialysos and Lindos, and elsewhere in the Dodecanese Islands.
Lago was succeeded by Cesare Maria De Vecchi (1936-1940), one of the Quadrumvirs in Mussolini’s central ruling tetrarchy. He imposed harsh rules of government, particularly as the Second World War and the Greco-Italian War approached. Wanting to further emphasize the “glory” of the Knights and their presence in Rhodes, and by association to extend that glory to the regime of which he was a founding member, De Vecchi had public buildings and new constructions cladded with "pietra finta" (faux stone),as a visual reference to the period of the Knights. Characteristic examples of this treatment include the Hotel Thermae and the Palazzo Littorio, which later became the City Hall.

Rodi's "Cattedrale Cattolica San Giovanni " in 1939

EXAMPLES OF ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE IN RODI CITY

* The ''Grande Albergo delle Rose'' (now "Casino Rodos") built by Florestano Di Fausto and Michele Platania in 1927, with a mix of Arab, Byzantine and Venetian styles.
* The ''Casa del Fascio'' of Rhodes, built in 1939 in typical fascist style. It serves now as the City Hall.
* The rebuilt of the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, destroyed under the Turks occupation by an explosion.
* The ''Catholic church of San Giovanni'' (now called "Chiesa dell' Annunciazione"), built in 1925 by Rodolfo Petracco and Florestano Di Fausto, as a reconstruction of the medieval cathedral church of the Knights of St. John.
* The ''Teatro Puccini'' of the city of Rhodes, now called "National Theater", built in 1937 with 1,200 seats.
* The ''Palazzo del Governatore'' in downtown Rhodes, built in 1927 in Venetian style by Di Fausto. It now houses the offices of the Prefecture of the Dodecanese.
* The "Palazzo di giustizia" (actually the "Capitaneria di Porto"), built by Rodolfo Petracco and Florestano Di Fausto.
* The "Palazzo delle Poste" (actually the Mail service building), built by Florestano Di Fausto.
* The new "Agora", a market of the port area (Mandraki), built by Di Fausto.
* The "Palazzo Aktaion", built in 1925 as the "Circolo d'Italia" for Italian miltary officials.
* The "Aquarium", built by architect Armando Bernabiti.
* The " Bank of Italy" building (actual "Bank of Greece") , built by Di Fausto.
* The St. Francis of Assisi catholic cathedral, built in 1939 by Bernabiti ( http://www.gcatholic.org/churches/europe/5467.htm), with famousterracotta bas-reliefs depicting the Stations of the Cross, created by sculptor Monteleone. * The rebuilt of the "Chiesa di Nostra Signora delle Vittorie", with a new façade created by Florestano Di Fausto in 1929.

Italian colonists in 1940 Rodi

THE ISLAND OF RHODES HISTORICAL ITALIAN SITES

The city of Rodi is located to the eastern side of the island of Rodi. It is the most important historical site of the island, but there are other places with importance (someone related to Italy's occupation of the island).

Detailed map of the Rodi island

Indeed historical sites on the island of Rhodes (outside of Rhodes city) include the Acropolis of Lindos, the Acropolis of Rhodes (with the Temple of Pythian Apollo and an ancient theatre and stadium), ancient Ialysos, ancient Kamiros, the ruins of the castle of Monolithos, the castle of Kritinia, St. Catherine Hospice and Rhodes Footbridge. But there are a few related to the Italian rule of the island during the first half of the XX cenrtury.

THe actual Palace of the Prefecture was the "Palazzo del Governatore" in the Italian Rodi city

Outside Rodi city, the locality with the best remains of the Italian presence & architecture is Eleousa (founded by the Italian government with the name "Campochiaro"). It is noteworthy to pinpoint that in the island were created the following "centri rurali" (farm villages) for Italian colonists: “Peveragno Rodio” (1929), “Campochiaro” (1935-36), “San Marco” (1936) and “Savona” (1936-38) -from 1938 called “San Benedetto”. Indeed during their occupation of Rhodes the Italians built these four agricultural villages that were to be populated only by Italian settlers. Three of them stood not far from the coast: San Benedetto (Kolymbia), San Marco (near Kattavia) and Peveragno (Kato Kalamata).But Profitis Ilias-Campochiaro was more inland on a huge hill.

PEVERAGNO RODIO (actual Epàno Kàlamon)
The center was named Peveragno Rodio in honor of the Governor of the Aegean Mario Lago, a native of the homonymous town in the province of Cuneo. It was elevated to a municipality on August 8, 1930. Obviously, agricultural production focused on Mediterranean crops: olive trees, vines and orchards, but there was also a livestock sector. At first 8,000 olive trees, 7,000 fruit trees and 130,000 vines were planted and 110 cattle and 800 sheep were brought in while a series of modern agro-industrial plants allowed the processing on site of the production that was mostly exported or which, as dairy products, immediately found an outlet on the market of nearby Rhodes.

Hundreds of workers with their families from Italy were brought in, excluding the involvement of Greek peasants who were present only as casual or wage workers. The settlers who were transferred there came from several Italian regions and above all from the province of Pavia: depending on the origin they were directed towards specific activities in relation to the experience gained in the places of origin: the people of Pavia took care of herbaceous and forage crops, the ones from Romagna of orchards and pastoralice those from Salerno. On balance it cannot be said that Peveragno Rodio was a success, nor with the short time in which the Italians worked it could be otherwise: the area was too vast to be quickly cultivated and fruitful, and was needed a lot of labor.

Peveragno Rodio was abandoned after WW2, but the village did not die. The most characteristic structures, including the lictorian-style buildings and the church have been transformed into an Greek army base: the area is forbidden to visit and the buildings cannot even be photographed but are still all "in service activities" to put it in military words. Even the work done by Italian farmers was not wasted. The land had already been cleared and the plants planted had grown in the meantime: the Italian company was replaced by Greek farmers, who treasured what had been left by the italian colonists.

Photo of Peveragno Rodio in 1938

The best village was Campochiaro, where there was also the so called "Casa di Mussolini" (Mussolini House). The house was built by governor Ceasre De Vecchi for Mussolini as his retirement home, though he never visited, and it was abandoned in the mid 1940's. Cesare De Vecchi (who ruled the island from 1936 to 1940), was one of the Quadrumvirs in Mussolini’s central ruling tetrarchy and strongly promoted the "italianization" of the island of Rodi in architecture, language, customs, etc...

Campochiaro (now Eleousa) dates back to 1935-1936. The village was constructed with a Roman Catholic Church, a school, a Casa del Fascio (local of the fascist party, with a now gone tower), municipal services, medical service, shops and even a cinema. All these buildings were (and are) grouped around a rectangular town square. Hydraulic works were also carried out, with a view to irrigation and power generation. For instance, there was a small hydroelectric plant that provided electricity. The round pond with fountain just outside the village is a reminder of these interventions. The settlers who came from the Trentino-Alto Adige, each received a house and a plot of land.

Image of Campochiaro in 1940

Actually the house is in bad conditions because of lack of maintenance since the 1950s, but in another "centro rurale" -named "San Marco"- the situation is different.

SAN MARCO (actual Kattavia)
In the southernmost part of the island of Rhodes, in the still almost uninhabited plain of Kattavia, there is the rural village San Marco (created circa 1936), with a clear Italian rationalist architectural matrix, with the bell tower that refers - in albeit simplified architectural terms - to the well-known one of the Serenissima Venezia, with the church dedicated to the aforementioned Saint and an entire area occupied by the elementary school classrooms (in a photo you can still see a few letters of the word "elementary"), for the children of the 200 Italian settlers who emigrated there, mostly from the regions of north east Italy (mainly Veneto and Romagna).

Actual photo of the silk factory created by the Italians in San Marco (now called Kattavia)

In "San Marco Villaggio di Rodi", until about 1942, about two hundred people lived there and worked hard there, even without the hoped-for results in agro-economic terms, since the surrounding land (obtained from a previous reclamation work of a large area stagnant) were excessively acidic/saline. The silk production was also raised and improved. In the same plain of Kattavia there was also a landing strip for Italian military aircraft, now almost indistinguishable.

After decades of oblivion and abandonment (what increasingly characterizes all the valuable built in the Italian Dodecanese of the 20-30s), for about two years private subjects have proudly restored the central body of the village (with cloister and colonnade), the church and partly the bell tower (the clock mechanisms have been stolen from time immemorial), opening a bar/restaurant there.



LINKS

* RODI ITALICA: (https://www.rodiitalica.it/ Associazione reduci e profughi dal Dodecaneso italiano)
*FARE GLI ITALIANI DELL"EGEO: (http://eprints-phd.biblio.unitn.it/2548/1/Tesi_di_dottorato_Filippo_Marco_Espinoza.pdf)
*Photos of Italian Rodi's architecture: (http://www.artefascista.it/rodi__fascismo__architettu.htm)
*L’ITALIA A RODI:
( http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/179/3/03%20-%20capitolo%20II%20-%20Italia%20a%20Rodi.pdf)
*RHODES HISTORY & ARCHITECTURE (1912-1945): (https://iris.unipa.it/retrieve/handle/10447/40817/399300/RITORNO_DEI_CAVALIERI_RODI%20.pdf)
*FOTO E STORIA DI RODI: (http://wwwbisanzioit.blogspot.com/search/label/Rodi)

1938 Postcard showing Campochiaro (now called Fleousa)

THE ITALO-LEVANTINI OF COSTANTINOPLE/ISTANBUL

From the beginning of the 10th century, Italians poured into eastern Mediterranean harbors to purchase spice and silk. Although Muslims invaded the Crusader states in this region, the invasions did not adversely impact their trade activities. Settling down in the East Mediterranean and marrying local non-Muslims, including Greeks, Armenians and Jews, the Italians (and some Europeans, mostly from France and also a few from Spain) made a new social class: the "Levantines" (photos of them:https://www.levantineheritage.com/photo.htm#1). At the time of late Byzantine Empire, there were locals from some Italian cities, including Venice, Genoa, Amalfi and Pisa. In 991 AD, the Byzantine Empire granted trade concessions to foreign populations who were fighting for the bizantine interests. Furthermore, the bizantine's Galata district in the Bosforo strait, where these people lived, had some autonomy: the Levantines (mostly from Genoa) of actual Istanbul settled in Beyoğlu and its surroundings. Beyoğlu was also known as "Pera", which means "pear" in Italian language.

The Galata tower in Costantinople/Istanbul is the main historical symbol of the Italian Levantines

In 1453 AD, when the Ottoman armies invaded Istanbul (then known as Constantinople), there were 600 Italian families in Pera. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Levantine population reached more than 25,000 people in 1927 and most of them were Italo-Levantines living in Istanbul and a few thousands in Smyrna (actual Izmir). Indeed historically there are two large communities of Italian Levantines: one in Istanbul and the other in İzmir (read: https://www.levantineheritage.com/links.htm). At the end of the 19th century there were nearly 6,000 Levantines of Italian roots in İzmir. They came mainly from the nearby Genoese island of Chios in the Aegean Sea. (if interested, read in Italian language more info at: https://web.archive.org/web/20110927134437/http://www.disp.let.uniroma1.it/kuma/intercultura/kuma11pannuti.html).

The migration of Latin families from Chios to Costantinople and Smyrna

When the island of Chios was conquered by the Ottomans in 1566, many families moved to Constantinople and Smyrna. A new current of exchanges in trade and relations begin between the Latins from Chios and Genoa and those of Constantinople. From the study of the Chios’ parochial registries, now conserved in the island of Tinos, and a manuscript, dated between 1825 and 1830, of Giovanni Isidoro, Catholic vicarious of Chios, recounting the dispersion of the populace after of the Turkish repression of 1822, we found the names of some of the old Latin families still present in the island: de Portu, Ferando, d’Andria, Castelli, Corpi, Marcopoli, Guglielmi, Giustiniani, Palassurò, Giuducci (Giudici), Reggio, Roustan.

Curiously, until XIXth century, there wasn’t the issue of nationality as regards to the Latins of Chios under Ottoman government, because there wasn’t a particular capitulation signed after the 1566 takeover, as was made in Constantinople after 1453 between Mahomet II and the Genoese colony. We suppose that these Latins conserved the own nationality, as we have evidence that Latins from Chios, when they migrated to Smyrna, still at the beginning of the XIXth century, were considered with a foreign nationality that was often, as in the case of the Giustiniani, was the nationality form their “original” country, in particular they come from Genoa, therefore: Italian.

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, some Latin families had found shelter in the Greek islands (Chios, Tinos, Syra, Naxos, Santorini), and when order and calm returned to the city, decided to return to Constantinople. This return migration quickened after 1537, when these islands, one after the other, were conquered by the Turks.

According to the registries of deaths of Saint Maria Draperis R.C. church in Pera, an important parish of Constantinople, from 1800 to 1855, 33.09% of the deceased persons were immigrants from three islands (Tinos 17,48%; Syra 13,43%; Chios 2.18%). We notice that those already established in Constantinople represent only 9.92% of the deaths. The Latins were re-united under a civil and religious body called “Magnificent Community”. This Community, around 1840, was placed under the jurisdiction of the Turkish ministry of the Foreign nations, took the name of “Ottoman Latin chancery” and its activity continued until 1927.

Examining the registries of deaths held at Saint Maria Draperis church, we found in the period from 1800 to 1855, the following names represented Latin families that had emigrated from Chios to Costantinople: Braggiotti, Bragiotti, Carco, Caro, Castelli, Charo, Cochino, Coresi, Coressi, Corpi, Doria, Gaidani, Gallizi, Giro, Giustiniani, Isidoro, Jobini, Jobiori, Justiniani, Magnifico, Marcopoli, Marcopolo, Massoni, Nomico, Petier, Piperi, Renaccio, Tubini, Vegeti, Xenopoulo, Zoratelli.

The foreign Latin Community lived its golden age from 1839, emanating out of the reforms of modernization of the Ottoman Empire, until the abolition of the capitulations with the Peace treaty signed at Lausanne on 24 July 1923. The new Republic of Turkey did not delay in applying a certain number of measures to liberate its commerce from foreign domination and that exercised by the minorities.

The Giustiniani branch in the city of Smyrna, come from of the family Giustiniani-De’ Fornetti (Count Palatino arriving in 1413), decreed a marquis by the Italian Sovereign on 22 February 1893, (recognized as a noble and patrician of Genoa by the Sovereign on 20 June 1891), a family also present at the time in Chios, Genoa, Spain and Sicily.

Finally, to learn in detail about the history of the Levantines, or to be more precise, the Italo-Levantines, we translate the italian essay (https://www.opiniojuris.it/medio-oriente/levantini/#_ftnref11) written by Rinaldo Marmara, Doctor of the University of Montpellier III, official historian of the "Apostolic Vicariate of Istanbul" and author of several books on the subject, in order to reconstruct the fundamental passages and to understand the history of this ancient community.

A family of Italian Levantines in the 1920s

The Italo-Ledvantini: Members of an ancient community, which has its roots in the period of the Crusades and the maritime republics, the Levantines are now disappearing. Origin, apogee and decadence of the Italians of Constantinople.(by, R. Marmara)

The origins

On May 29, 1453, the Genoese handed over the keys to the city of Constantinople as a sign of submission to Mehmet II (Mehmet II Fātiḥ, “The Conqueror”).

Christian Constantinople became Istanbul, the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. The conversion was followed by a provision ("ferman") that ensured freedom of worship for the Christians of Galata/Pera and the re-establishment of the Orthodox patriarchate.

Despite this provision, many Latins fled the city to take refuge on the nearby island of Chios, which was still under Genoese domination, while those who decided to stay became Ottoman subjects. Therefore, we have the presence of people who cannot be classified according to a specific nationality, but who are defined as “Latins” who were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Latins could not be defined as a Millet minority (like the Armenians, the Greeks or the Jews) but were considered “Taifé” (class, human group).

Many of the Latins who had fled with the capture of Constantinople, then decided to return to the city over time, but according to the laws of the time they could not have stayed more than a year. Those who extended their stay for a period longer than a year, lost the legal status of foreigner and could not therefore leave the country, becoming in all respects an Ottoman subject.

Mehmet II, for issues related to the development of commercial activities that were mainly managed by the Latins, decided to extend the period from 1 to 10 years with the capitulations of 1535. It is important to explain how important the capitulations were in this area. In those of 1569 there is no longer any mention of the period of permanence in the Empire that should not be exceeded.

The capitulations in the Ottoman Empire were contracts concluded between the Empire and various European powers. The capitulations were binding legal acts by which the Ottoman Sultans granted rights and privileges to the Christian States in favor of the subjects of the latter, present in various capacities on Ottoman territory, as a sort of extension of the rights and privileges that those same European Powers had enjoyed at the time of the Byzantine Empire. In the years following the capture of Constantinople, first Genoa (1453), then Venice (1454) and then later Florence and Ancona, stipulated this type of agreement that favored the development of commercial activities.

The return of the Latins had generated a particular situation. Members of the same family could find themselves with different legal statuses. Those who had decided not to abandon the city after the capture of 1453 were considered subjects of the Ottoman Empire, while those who had escaped and then returned were considered foreigners and thanks to the capitulations enjoyed full rights and privileges. This group of returned foreigners can be called "Levantines".

The word Levantines, meaning “from the Levant”, was initially used by the Venetians, who with a negative connotation indicated those who settled in the East for trade, far from the motherland, and who often managed to gain economic benefits quickly thanks also to the advantages derived from the capitulations.

With the expression Levantines we therefore indicate a group of foreigners who lived in the Ottoman Empire, but to which group do we want to attribute this label? To the Italians, of course, because they were the huge majority in Costantinople/Istanbul.

In bizantine Costantinople there were the Genoese, Venetian, Amalfitan and Pisan "Quarters". They were located just in front of Pera, as can read in the map

The apogee

The reform policies carried out by Sultans Mahmud II (1808-1839), Abdülmecid I (1839-1861) and Abdülaziz (1861-1876) and which go under the name of Tanzȋmât, had as their objective modernizing the Empire, countering the independence aims of the different ethnic groups that composed it, and halting the slow international decline of what would become the "Great Sick Man of Europe".

Sultan Abdülmecid I with the promulgation of the Hatt-ı Hümâyun of Gǘlhâne on November 3, 1839, inaugurated the Tanzȋmât by proclaiming the equality of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire without distinction of religion and nationality. The reforms ensured, among other things, “The guarantee of respect for their lives and their property” and “A regular way to determine the payment of taxes”. The privileges granted to non-Muslim subjects were confirmed and expanded with the imperial rescript of 1856. It is important to underline these steps because, thanks to these reforms and the favorable climate that had been established, a significant number of foreigners arrived in the Ottoman Empire in search of work and better living conditions. Thus, from the mid-19th to the beginning of the 20th century, we witness the apogee of the Latin Community of Constantinople.

Although it is difficult to establish precisely how many there were, we know that Italian citizens were the largest group of the Levantine community, which numbered around 30,000 out of a total of approximately 900,000 inhabitants of the city.

From the study carried out in various archives, it is possible to establish that families from Italy, including the Timoni, Testa, Chirico, Franchini and Giustiniani, Giudici just to name a few, settled permanently in Constantinople in that period. This group, which over time became a true caste, also by virtue of the transmission from father to son of the office of "dragoman" in the various European and Ottoman embassies or legations, was commonly defined as the “Magnificent community of Pera”, from the name of the neighborhood they inhabited. The success of the Italian element and the Italian language at a diplomatic level in the lands of the Sultan was due to the members of this community.

The Italian community present in Constantinople during its heyday could be divided into three groups. The first was made up of Italians already present in Constantinople, those who came from the greek archipelago and the Jews who had escaped from Spain. The second group, the majority, was made up of new arrivals in the city. The third group was made up of workers looking for work in the large construction sites where foreign labor was sought after.

At the beginning of the 19th century, there were about fifty Italian industrial companies present in Ottoman territory: among these we remember the Ansaldo House, which had built two torpedo boats in addition to repairing and transforming the Ottoman fleet; the Dapei foundries present since 1835, the Camondo brick factory since 1874, as well as distilleries, pasta factories, tailors. There were also eighty commercial houses in Constantinople alone: insurers, bankers, publishers, opticians, the presence and influence of Italians in the Ottoman Empire in the economic and cultural sphere was extremely important, just look at the number of religious institutions such as churches, convents, and then schools, hospitals, orphanages born after the 1867 law that authorized the right to property.

The life of the community of Italian origin took place, in the XIX century and early XX century, around some associations. In 1838 the "Associazione Commerciale Artigiana di Pietà" was born, founded to relieve poor artisans. In 1863 there was the First Branch of the Universal Israelite Alliance and the Respectable Italian Lodge in the East of Constantinople founded under the auspices of the Grand Orient of Turin, and also supported by the ambassador of the Kingdom of Italy. The "Dante Alighieri Society" inaugurated in 1895 which since then has been a center of social and cultural aggregation operating through initiatives such as the establishment of schools, the library, the organization of public conferences and the promotion of the Italian language (please read in italian language: https://journals.openedition.org/diacronie/1785).

The "Società Operaia Italiana" di Mutuo Soccorso was founded in 1863, two years after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, seven years before Rome was united with the rest of the peninsula. The Società Operaia Italiana was an association in which, alongside ideals and nostalgia, practical actions aimed at mutual support were carried out. Each member was required to make monthly donations to a fund intended to support the less wealthy members. Among the papers kept in the archives of “Casa Garibaldi” as it was renamed, the correspondence between the two Presidents is preserved: Giuseppe Garibaldi the effective one and Giuseppe Mazzini the honorary one.

Among the most important Italian figures who lived in Constantinople we cannot fail to mention Giuseppe Donizetti, author of the first Ottoman national anthem which in honor of Sultan Mahmud was entitled Marcia Mahmudiye, or that of the painter Fausto Zonaro author of works such as The Ertuğrul Regiment on the Galata Bridge, and later appointed court painter, or Raimondo D’Aronco one of the major architects exponent of the Art Nouveau world, or the portrait painter Leonardo Di Mango, whose remains are preserved in a state of abandonment in the Latin cemetery of Feriköy.

The Italian colony, also present in other cities such as Smyrna, developed and lived in Constantinople between the districts of Pera (or Galata), today Beyoğlu, an elegant neighborhood rebuilt after the fire of 1870 where neoclassical and Art Nouveau buildings alternate, and of Pangalti.

The origin of the name of the latter according to some sources comes from "hot breads" due to the presence of several bakeries in the area, but most likely the name comes from an Italian, Pancaldi, who moved from Bologna to Constantinople and in that area opened a café that soon became a meeting point for many Italians.

This cosmopolitan, fluid and creative panorama, however, came to an abrupt end in the first decade of the twentieth century. In fact, the intensified nationalistic pressures on both the Italian and Ottoman-Turkish sides, progressively distanced the two communities and led them to a definitive break during the Libyan war of 1911-12. Previously, during the Dodecanese War, the Italians in Constantinople did not suffer any consequences, the Council of Ministers in fact recommended the Governors of cities and provinces to ensure maximum protection, but with the war in Libya, the Sultan and especially the government of the CUP (“Committee of Union and Progress”) responded to the Italian invasion of Tripolitania by expelling all Italians from the Empire and in particular from Constantinople.

1912 postcard showing some Italo-levantines, refugees from Istanbul, just arrived in Ancona

The Ottoman government decreed the expulsion of all Italian citizens residing in Turkey, with the exception of railway construction workers, clergymen and widows. These measures affected 7,000 Italo-Levantines from Smyrna and more than 12,000 from Constantinople. To avoid repatriation, many opted for Ottoman citizenship. The expelled, who were the majority, were repatriated in the following days to the ports of Ancona, Naples and Bari.

This event marked the beginning of the end of the Italian community in Constantinople. Although many returned after the end of the conflict, the community never recovered to the level of its past splendor. However, in Istanbul, during the twenty years of Mussolini's rule, the "Circolo Roma" and the "Casa d'Italia" were born, as meeting centers for local Italians.

The decline

What are the causes of this decline?

Today (2015) the community has about 5/6000 Italians but the number of true Levantines is about 1500/2000 units.

Rinaldo Marmara (R. Marmara, "Lessico Etimologico delle parole greche mutuate dall’italiano – Gli italiani di Costantinopoli" – Istituto italiano di cultura. Istanbul, 2008) explains that "Being Levantine was a spirit, a culture, even if legally opposed it was a single family, with the same habits and the same way of thinking, of speaking. The true Levantine must be able to speak Greek, as it was the vehicular language of the Europeans settled in the lands of the East, but also French, Italian and Turkish. The evolution of linguistic relations between the Levantines is curious. To fill the gaps in their knowledge of Greek, the Italians Hellenized their words thus enriching the koinè, or the common Greek language".

Things began to change with the birth of the Turkish Republic, both from the point of view of guaranteeing privileges for foreigners, and from a religious point of view.

The Ottoman Empire guaranteed a sort of freedom of worship perhaps greater than that of already secular countries such as France, so it was common to witness processions and public religious functions in the streets of Constantinople. On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly, through the approval of some amendments to the organic law of 1921, proclaimed the establishment of the Turkish Republic and elected Kemal Ataturk as its President. The latter, even before being the father of "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti" on a political level, is to be considered its architect from an ideological point of view. Kemal promoted an essential core of values aimed at remodelling contemporary Turkish society, transforming it into an emancipated and progressive nation. In this perspective of modernization of the country in a Western sense, the ideological system forged by the Kemalist elite rested on six well-known pillars, renamed 'arrows of Kemalism': republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, statism and reformism. The process of Turkish secularism takes the name of 'laiklik':it referred in abstract to the rigid separation between State and Churches typical of the model of 'assertive' or 'militant' secularism of French origin.

The decline that began with the birth of the Republic transformed into a rupture with the "Istanbul riots" of 6-7 September 1955, against the backdrop of the conflicts between Turkey and Greece that had continued since the end of the First World War. The pretext was the false news of the fire set on the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the seat of the Turkish Consulate in Thessaloniki, Greece, reported in an afternoon edition of the local newspaper Istanbul Express, printed for the occasion in more than 200 thousand copies, which amplified the lie and gave rise to the violence that began to invade Istanbul starting at 5 pm a Pogrom, a premeditated devastation tolerated by the authorities, mainly against the Greek community, but also against the Armenian and Jewish ones.

The violence led to the death of 16 people (13 Greeks, 2 Orthodox priests and one Armenian), there were rapes and forced circumcisions, damage to more than 5,000 commercial activities. The sad images of the devastation of those days were immortalized by a young Ara Guler, the famous Turkish-Armenian photographer, considered one of the fathers of twentieth-century photography. Insecurity and fear pushed thousands of individuals belonging to minorities from Turkey, including many Levantines and Romanians, to abandon the country forever.

Another “social” factor in the decline of the Levantines, in addition to the demographic one, was (according to Rinaldo) the opening towards Turkish society with mixed marriages. “With mixed marriages, that “way of thinking” typical of minorities has disappeared, capable of formulating the same answers to questions that came from outside, which perhaps did not correspond to the truth but was a defense system based on the cohesion of the community".

Notable people

Famous people of the present-day Italian levantine community in Istanbul include:

Sir Alfredo Biliotti

Sir Alfredo Biliotti, who joined the British foreign service and eventually rose to become one of its most distinguished consular officers in the late 19th century. Biliotti was also an accomplished archaeologist who conducted important excavations at sites in the Aegean and Anatolia.

Livio Missir di Lusignano. Historian (his masterpiece is Les anciennes familles italiennes de Turquie).

Giuseppe Donizetti, musicist. He was Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at Sultan Mahmud II's court

COMMUNIST CHINA IS NOW A POSSIBLE NEOFASCIST STATE

There it is a growing discussion between experts and political historians about the changes that are happening in modern comunist China, a country that used to be a "maoist" (or stalinist) state after WW2. China -as we all know- was a country (under the leadeship of the harsh dictator Mao-tse-tung) where the worst extremism of the communism ideology was being developed in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. And Mao rejected every link with the fascist regime of the "Kuomintang", a Chinese nationalist political party that had an alleged history of fascism under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership.

In blue the map area of China controlled by the fascist Kuomintang in the mid 1930s

Indeed we all know that communism in eastern Europe and Russia/URSS disappeared in the early 1990s, but remained in China and other countries (like Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, etc...). Consequently, in China there has been an evolution in the local communist party in order to survive. And this evolution seems to have created a country with characteristics similar to the ones that existed in fascist Italy.

Let me explain better: fascism is ruled by a party that controls the economy with "corporativism" (that is made by huge state companies with monopoly in their area of activity) but allows capitalism and the existence of religions to every citizen, communism is ruled by a party and has a state owned economy without allowing capitalism and religion existense. Both political ideologies of communism and fascism promote nationalism and a moderate local ethnicity/racism, with the consequence of promoting militarism. The huge growth of the italian (& german) economy in the 1930s impressioned the actual leaders of China (like Xi Jinping), who commented that without military expansionism (that provoked WW2) the fascist regime in Italy -with corporate government companies (ruling the economy without opposition) and capitalism plus religions- probably would be in power even today.....and this kind of fascist corporativism is exactly what is happening in communist China today!


Of course we have to see in the next decades if the leaders of communist China have learned the lesson of not going to war, risking the end of fascist Italy.....

Furthermore, allow me to remember that years ago I have read an article (written in 2012 by Didi Kirsten Tatlow) of the New Youk Times that questioned if "China is a fascist state". Here it is some interesting excerpts:

Chinese politics is controlled by the Communist Party and its powerful families and factions, so when the son of a former party chief says the state is virtually “fascist,” it’s worth listening.That’s what Hu Deping, son of the late Hu Yaobang, the party general secretary forced to resign in 1987 for being too reform-minded, said to a group of mostly Chinese businesspeople and environmentalists in late 2005, in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square....Is today’s China fascist? To cite a few characteristics, starting with the one-party state: Since the economic reforms that followed the death of Mao Tse Tung, it has grown immensely wealthy through its state-owned companies, some of which rank among the world’s richest. What was once a poor, authoritarian state has become a rich, authoritarian state.The rights to speak and associate freely remain tightly hobbled despite some relaxation, and some top officials openly scorn democracy. The courts obey the party’s directives.Official slogans increasingly exhort nationalism and “national rejuvenation,” a concept rooted in a mystical sense of nationhood popular with fascist thinkers in the last century.“The signs have long been there,” said Wang Lixiong, a prominent writer and scholar. “I feel there is a very clear trend toward fascism, and the source of fascism comes from the ever-growing power of the power holders.” China is “a police state,” he said, where power rules for power’s sake.The passing of Mao did not lead to power-sharing, it just stripped China of its Communist ideology, and no convincing value system has filled the gap, he said.

Indeed there was a time when China was referred to as a society which was Communist or Post-Communist; today, the terms Authoritarian Capitalist or Capitalist with Asian/Chinese Characteristics are more common. However, there is a new term that appears to be increasingly applicable to the operation of the Chinese state and its impact on the lives of Chinese people and, above all, the education of Chinese youth born in the 1990s and later: "NEO-FASCIST CHINA".

It is increasingly clear that China is the most powerful, mature and internationally accepted "fascist state" in global history and its status as such should cause us all a great deal of studies but also worries.

China communist economy is actually booming, as can be seen in this 2022 skyline of Shanghai

To call contemporary China a fascist state is nothing particularly new. In March 2010, the Taipei Times published an editorial by a J. Michael Cole, which refers to the writings of italian Umberto Eco and english Robert Paxton to match accepted definitions of fascism with the socio-political realities in China. Cole points to the realities of emphasizing the role of the nation in all matters, including sports; a sense of national grievance as the core of national identity; the paranoid control of any potential opposition; and the rise of a "moderate" Han Chinese racism. Cole is right in much of his analysis. But for all its correctness, his analysis from Taipei cannot compare to the sadness & preoccupation that is the lived reality of watching this fascist state unfold before one's very eyes in the center of Chinese power in Beijing.

Paxton provides a useful definition of fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” And this is exactly what is happening in China actually

Fascist states have long relied upon their competitive advantage in attracting foreign investment. Authoritarian control of the labor force and national policymaking makes good business sense. Such was the case with Italy and Germany during the inter-war period and such is the case with China's dizzyingly rapid rise today. The ability of a totalitarian fascist state to control the labor force, suppress dissent and put investment over social welfare makes such states highly attractive to businesses. Such is the case today with China. Coca-Cola's CEO inadvertently demonstrated the fascist nature of the Chinese state when he lauded the “one-stop shop in terms of the Chinese foreign investment agency,” wherein the federal and local Chinese government agencies are competing for investment, with their population paying the cost in terms of reduced labor rights and environmental protections.

Chinese will often accept this as a necessary part of their national development, a development which seems increasingly to benefit only those with power and connections and to increasingly marginalize the common people. One need not look merely at the statements of business leaders, but much mainstream media attention has praised the “efficiency” of the Chinese fascist regime while deriding the clumsiness and inconvenience of states which remain nominal liberal democracies.

As written by Sam Hudson of the University of Cambridge, the issue of Chinese fascism is one which the people of the world must pay much greater attention than they have to date. Too much emphasis is placed on the economic power of China without thought to the origins of this power and the long-term sociopolitical consequences it may have for the world.

The roots of China’s descent into fascism can be traced back to Deng Xiaoping’s ascent to power and economic reforms that openly rejected central planning in favour of market-based economics. These reforms were instrumental in not only achieving China’s rapid economic growth, but also in ensuring a place on the world stage, through opening up the country to global markets. On the surface, these reforms relinquished state power over the economy; but by allowing private enterprise, they laid the foundations for an economy similar to those found in the fascist countries of the 1930s and 40s.

A core facet of fascism is the weaponisation of capitalism to help further the authority and interests of the government. As opposed to Soviet-style centrally planned economics, fascists are quite content with the development of private monopolies and the conglomeration of private businesses, enriching their owners – as long as it is in the interest of the government to do so. The tolerance of the Zaibatsu by the Imperial Japanese Militarist Government, the huge help to the Fiat and the Agnelli group done by Mussolini and the Nazi’s open support of powerful monopolies in Germany such as IG Farben, Krupp and Rheinmetall, pay testament to this. China’s economy is far closer to this form of fascistic weaponised capitalism, tolerating powerful monopolies such as Huawei as long as they continue to silently pledge fealty, than it is to a market-reformed Soviet Union along the lines of Gorbachev’s russian perestroika.

If Dengism laid the economic roots for the development of Chinese fascism, it is Xi Jinping that allowed it to blossom. In 1995, italian Umberto Eco provided one of the most comprehensive definitions of fascism in his essay “Ur-Fascism” - "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" (https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Eco-urfascism.pdf). By looking at China’s adherence to the properties that were laid out in his essay, we can quickly see that the Chinese government is at heart, fascist without any doubt.

Anyway, the improvements in this possible neofascist China in the last years are astonishing the world: Let's think -as an example- to the "Maglev" trains that are being created in the 2020s!

The Maglev train network studied for China at more than 600km/hour speed

Finally, what strikes me more is the question: if China has grown to the level of developing "futuristic" Maglev trains in just 30 years (in 1994 it was a mostly underdeveloped country!), what will be able to do in another 30 years, as a possible neofascist state?

"China has the largest network of high-speed railways in the world, covering 95 percent of cities with a population of more than a million, according to the Ministry of Transport. China aims to build 200,000 kilometers of railways, 460,000 kilometers of highways, and 25,000 kilometers of high-level sea lanes by 2035, according to a 15-year transport expansion guideline published in February this year. The network is designed to support the "National 123" transportation circle, which stands for one-hour commute within the city, two-hour trip between city clusters and three-hour travel to major cities nationwide, read the plan. Lu Huapu, director of the Transportation Research Institute of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that the development of the high-speed transportation system helps China realize the "National 123 transportation circle," which was proposed in the national guideline." G.T.

In 2022 China created a prototype of a Maglev commercial train capable to reach -in theory- nearly 1000 km/hour (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202107/1229097.shtml)