original title:
La via della conciliazione
directed by:
cast:
Franco Ferrarotti, David Kertzer, Padre Bernard Ardura, Paolo Portoghesi, Gianni Gai, Anna Baldi, Franco Andreoli
cinematography:
editing:
production:
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2016
film run:
52'
format:
colour
status:
Ready (01/12/2016)
festivals & awards:
Everyone can visualise Via della Conciliazione with St Peter's Basilica in the
background. This image is Rome's most famous postcard, the backdrop against which
TV news correspondents report on the Vatican, the Pope or the city. Few realise that this
street has not always been there, and that in fact it should not be there. The truth is that
Michelangelo, who designed and built the dome of St Peter’s, and Bernini, the
colonnade's architect, had envisaged a surprise effect on pilgrims emerging onto St
Peter’s Square from the labyrinthine streets of the adjacent neighbourhood.
Successive Popes had, over the centuries, toyed with the idea of building a triumphal
route into the Vatican to welcome crowds of pilgrims and send the world a powerfully
symbolic image of the power of the Church, but they never succeeded in realising this
ambition.
Paradoxically, the situation only changed when Mussolini, an overtly anticlerical atheist
at the start of his career, realized that if he wanted power in Italy he would have to get
the Catholic Church on his side.
The Duce focused on a treaty between the Italy and the Holy See. This treaty is still in
force today and regulates Church-State relations. It led to the Church receiving
substantial financial support and acquiring its leading role in the religious and civic lives
of the Italian people, greatly undermining the power of the secular state. The pact led to
the birth of the Vatican City, the smallest but not the least powerful state in the world.
The price paid by Mussolini and Italy to reconcile Church and State also needed a
tangible manifestation. To sanction the accord, Pope Pius XI obtained Mussolini's
promise to demolish the densely built-up area extending out from in front of the
colonnade of St Peter’s Square. On 29 October 1936, Benito Mussolini, with a swing of
his pickaxe, officially inaugurated the demolition work. In less than a year, the area had
been razed to the ground. So began construction of the great new artery in the centre
of Rome, Via della Conciliazione, commemorating the reconciliation between the Italian
State and the Holy See.
Today, Via della Conciliazione is firmly part of the city’s fabric, familiar to Romans,
tourists and the Catholic faithful from across the world. But to a very few it is still an
open wound, a place of painful memories. This film relates the story of an architectural
project which had enormous impact on the history, religion and lives of the people of
Rome, using exclusive access to archive material and direct accounts by the last living
eyewitnesses.