When the Treaty of Rome was signed in March 1957, laying the groundwork for what is today the European Union, the heads of the six founding nations put their signatures to paper in the august main hall of a palazzo designed by Michelangelo. When the leaders of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia meet Tuesday to sign a treaty of cooperation at an air base near the Italian capital, they will do so in a newly constructed setting that a Rome paper described Sunday as a "Disneyland for the powerful."
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From Michelangelo to Mickey? .
In part, the idea to hold the event at the base, at Pratica di Mare, rather than in the center of Rome was based on security concerns. With the nations of the West on heightened anti-terror alert, the protected military confines were considered more manageable. .
As part of the security, the Italians will mobilize 15,000 people, including police officers, soldiers and other security forces. They have installed ground-to-air missiles nearby to protect the airspace, and have ordered ships of the Italian Navy to clear a zone along the nearby Mediterranean coast. .
But the idea for the stage setting at Pratica, which will be dismantled as soon as the leaders depart, is attributed to the flamboyant prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who paid his way through college by crooning on cruise ships and now owns Italy's largest entertainment business, the Mediaset television empire. .
What he ordered is a complex of structures. The main one, with arches vaguely reminiscent of the Colosseum, is where the government leaders will meet and sign the NATO-Russia treaty. Another setting, described as resembling an Aztec temple, will be used for news conferences for the 1,500 journalists accredited to cover the event. A third, resembling an airplane hangar but in faux travertine marble, will offer work spaces for the journalists, including computers with Cyrillic letters for the Russians among them. The structures are built of plywood and other light materials painted to look like stone. To add a touch of genuineness, Berlusconi ordered an archaeological museum in Naples to supply real ancient Roman statuary - including amazons, satyrs, muses and a shepherd with his sheep. But there will also be fake ancient Roman statuary - fiberglass replicas of statues that will hold floral displays as a decorative backdrop to the gathering. .
Berlusconi is no stranger to this sort of setting. Last July, when the leaders of the eight major industrialized nations held their annual meeting in Genoa, he was mocked by the part of the Italian news media he does not own for hanging huge canvases, painted to look like classical facades, in front of rundown palazzos that could not be restored in time for the talks. .
During that meeting, anti-globalization protesters staged sometimes violent demonstrations, in the course of which one protester was shot and killed by the police. Berlusconi bore much of the blame for what was widely seen as poor security. .
This time the prime minister, who recently referred to the new treaty with characteristic hyperbole as "a signing of planetary breadth - the marriage of NATO and Russia," mobilized 6,000 workers to erect the structures at a cost of $11.5 million. .
Berlusconi has also thought of the customary group photo. He will have his personal lighting engineer, and a lighting system has been installed so that technicians can focus on each of the heads of state in the best possible aura. .
Berlusconi, of course, is not the first modern Italian leader to strive for effect. In the 1930s, Mussolini began construction of monumental buildings on the edge of Rome for a "universal exposition," a world's fair to be held in 1940. The idea was to glorify the achievements of his fascist regime. .
Italy's entry into World War II on the side of Hitler caused the fair to be scrapped, but one building that was erected is a kind of cubist copy of the Colosseum. It remains standing and can be seen by visitors as they approach the city from Fiumicino. Romans, some lovingly and some mockingly, refer to it as the Square Colosseum. Mario Catalano, the architect who designed the structures at Pratica, objects to comparisons with the Colosseum. .
"Don't call my project the Colosseum," he told the Rome daily Il Messaggero in an interview. "I was inspired by an ideal parliament, certainly not the Colosseum. And of all the proposals that were presented, Prime Minister Berlusconi chose just this one." .
But some who have seen the main structure at the air base say it resembles the Square Colosseum, but cut in half, with its corners rounded.Catalano said Berlusconi had given directions for a setting that would afford a certain idea of "Italianita," or Italianness. The architect's response, Catalano added, was "classic."
Here's a critique of the above article:
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May 31, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Ridiculous, Even for a Journalist
The Times goes after Italy’s Berlusconi. |
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Returning from Europe, I'm sitting on the plane reading Tuesday's International Herald Tribune, which featured a long article from the New York Times about Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. It was written by John Tagliabue, who has been writing from Rome for years and years, but it could have been written by any frustrated leftist who cannot stand the fact that the Italian people are enthusiastically voting for center-right and even out and out right-wing parties and candidates. Tagliabue trots out the usual tired list of Berlusconi's sins, beginning with his ownership of the country's most popular television stations. Berlusconi's critics claim that this "explains" his popularity with the Italians. His TV stations are believed to have somehow hypnotized the Italians into voting for him and his party.
Quite aside from the fact that the political clout of TV news has long been overestimated (back when Reagan beat Mondale, James Reston — then the acknowledged "dean" of American journalism — wrote words to the effect that "never before have so many of us in the media worked so hard to defeat a candidate as we have this year to defeat Ronald Reagan, and we have failed miserably"), Tagliabue and his ilk never mention that his opponents until recently controlled the state-owned, politically correct channels that indoctrinated the Italian public until Berlusconi came along. Nor does he mention that many of Berlusconi's presumed puppets on his own channels speak their own left-wing minds, denounce him and his policies, and campaign for his opponents.
Well, fair enough, so far as it goes. I'm not one who thinks that the Times should feel the slightest bit ashamed at withholding material facts from the American public. Why bother to own the most influential newspaper in America unless you intend to use it to crush the opposition? So I applaud the relentless distortion of the news for political advantage that is so well demonstrated in the Tagliabue story.
But there are limits, and Tagliabue surpasses them in his assault on Berlusconi. The "news hook" for the Tagliabue article is the construction of a high-priced conference center that at least one person in Rome — quoted but never named — thinks is rather like a Walt Disney version of what a proper conference center should be. So what? You may ask, and I ask it along with you. John Tagliabue answers, "because it turns out that there's at least one person in Rome who thinks that Berlusconi's conference center looks like half of a structure that was built while Mussolini was ruling Italy."
Now I think it's safe to say that very few people, even the sophisticated ones that read the Times, care very much about neoclassical architecture in Italy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The architecture is simply an excuse to imply that Berlusconi is some sort of fascist, first duping the Italians with his television and then imitating the Duce's bad taste in buildings.
It's a shabby performance, and it isn't likely to convince anyone. But it might get Tagliabue a free dinner in Rome from one of Berlusconi's many political enemies. Who, by the way, failed to gain ground in a round of local elections over the weekend. I guess the TV magic is still working.