The choice by different regimes as to what matters in the past and what does not is always a telling factor in their character. Mussolini's dictatorship in Italy made major play with romanita through its representation of the dictator as a new Caesar and its claim to be ‘restoring’ the Roman empire. The centro storico of Rome is still full of such Fascist messaging. The regime was also the first to call itself totalitarian and, since the 1980s, a standard interpretation has developed accepting that Mussolini did indeed push his people far along the road to having their minds and actions fascistized. This interpretation, however, with its focus on culture above other issues, underestimates the extensive sectors of Italian life where rival ideas and behaviour survived and flourished. So, too, romanita could signal Catholic, Vatican, class, family and national allegiances as well as ones favoured by the regime. The real message of inter-war Rome was therefore as much about an Italian dictatorship as a Fascist one.

中文翻译：

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Francesco Saverio（父亲）、Marcello Cesare Augusto（儿子）：在法西斯罗马寻找有用的历史？

不同政权对过去重要和不重要的选择始终是他们性格中的一个重要因素。墨索里尼在意大利的独裁统治通过将独裁者描述为新凯撒并声称要“恢复”罗马帝国，对罗马帝国产生了重大影响。罗马的中心故事仍然充满了这样的法西斯信息。该政权也是第一个称自己为极权主义的政权，自 1980 年代以来，一种标准的解释已经发展，接受墨索里尼确实推动他的人民走得很远，使他们的思想和行为被法西斯化。然而，这种将文化重点放在其他问题之上的解释低估了意大利生活的广泛领域，在这些领域中，对立的思想和行为得以幸存并蓬勃发展。因此，romanita 也可以象征天主教、梵蒂冈、阶级，家庭和国家的忠诚以及政权所青睐的。因此，两次世界大战期间罗马的真正信息既是关于意大利独裁统治，也是关于法西斯独裁统治。