The Limits of National Memory: Anti-Fascism, the Holocaust and the Fosse Ardeatine Memorial in 1990s Italy

This article uses the memorial to the 1944 Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome as a case study that demonstrates how the symbolic function of memorials can alter over time. Focusing on the changing meanings of the monument in a post-Cold War context, it examines how, during the 1990s, the memorial was transformed from a central, national symbol of the Italian anti-fascist Resistance to one which evoked the Holocaust. It argues that this shift in meaning recast the monument – and the massacre itself – as a site and an event at the margins of national history and memory.