Roma, Città Sportiva - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 147

analysis of preparations for the tournament, however, reveals the nature
and extent of the deeply conservative Christian Democrat party's (DC) postwar
hegemony over national political life. The dominant force in Rome's municipal
government, the DC's monopoly of power was reflected in the controversial and
deeply flawed decision to site the olympic Games at opposite ends of the city. in
the decade that began with preparations for the Catholic Church's Jubilee in 1950,
construction for the Rome games was the final act in ten years of plundering of
the city's real estate that became known as the twentieth-century “sack of Rome”
(martin 2011a, 84).
headed by DC Deputy Giulio andreotti, the Rome 1960 organizing Com-
mittee had two options for the olympic park. The most obvious and expected
was the redevelopment and expansion of the foro italico site. alternatively, there
was a proposal to construct a series of completely new facilities in the city's east-
ern suburbs, roughly between the Roman consular roads of Via salaria and Via
Casilina. holding the olympic Games there would have guaranteed a huge boost
to sport and leisure in one of the capital's poorest areas, which was in need of
drastic regeneration. even though legacy was yet to become an international
olympic Committee prerequisite, the lack of interest in this potentially long-last-
ing benefit was indicative of the italian olympic Committee's approach to mass
sport.
with development in the needy, eastern sector of the city excluded, the
games were divided between the foro italico site and the esposizione univer-
sale Roma district. almost diametrically opposite in the north and south of the
capital, this choice demanded new infrastructure and a connecting road. as one
of italy's first environmentalists, antonio Cederna, protested, the decision did
not correspond with the demands of the city's master plan (Cederna 1965, 59).
moreover, its contempt for the elementary norms of reasonable urban planning
marked it as a truly decisive turn for Rome.
Connecting these two distant sporting centers, the Via olimpica was pro-
jected as a fast-flowing highway. in reality, it consisted of some new road sections
stitched together with existing, redeveloped streets. so incapable was it of dealing
with traffic during the event that its use was restricted to athletes and accredited
journalists. more significant, however, was the road's impact on land prices in
the northwestern sector of the city, much of which was owned by the società
Generale immobiliare (General estate agency). among its major shareholders
were the Vatican, fiat, and the cement producer italcementi.
enquiries by the left-wing newspapers L' E s p r e s s o and L' U n i t à exposed an
alleged carve-up to the exclusive advantage of the land's religious proprietors
(benedetti 1960, 1; Cancogni 1960, 11; perria 1960, 3). with values rising by 150
percent in ten years, the Vatican was proposed as the olympic winner. as terry
Kirk argued in his architectural study of the city: “for the same reasons that
mayor ernesto Nathan had turned down the idea of hosting the olympics in