La Casa delle Armi al Foro Mussolini di Luigi Moretti: l’ambiguità delle fonti / Luigi Moretti’s Fencing Academy at Foro Mussolini: ambiguities of the sources

Abstract

The most important work of the roman architect Luigi Moretti for the ONB represents, for the events concerning the 20th-century architectural heritage, a paradigmatic case. After a period of oblivion in the post-war years, it found itself at the center of a vortex of events that led to its physical and symbolic disruption. It became the manifesto of the movement of opinion that fought for the recovery of the modern architecture. Between 1998 and 2002, we conducted a campaign of studies and surveys that allowed us to follow the initial phase of the building’s recovery (2013). After a decade, a new phase of restoration began, which, amidst announcements and inaugurations, faced a predictable stagnation and the loss of important clues for the reconstruction of the original image. The contribution aims to critically address the extreme trust in the supposed completeness and reliability of sources, reassessing the role of direct investigation.