After World War II, prompted by the Allies, Germany underwent an intense de-Nazification program. Not so Italy — there was no equivalent de-fascistization. The country is still filled with buildings and street names that evoke its 20-year dictatorship.

By not challenging the history of these monuments, the memory of fascism has been smoothly integrated into the Italian present. — NPR

Should a modern democracy preserve an architecture and landscape designed to glorify the 20th century’s most infamous dictator? And, if the answer is yes, how?

The city of Nuremberg has grappled with these questions for years. It is now about to embark on an €85m plan to conserve the vast Nazi party rally grounds designed by Adolf Hitler’s architect Albert Speer. — The Art Newspaper

Italy’s far-right Lega party, which won almost 18% of the vote in the general election on 4 March and could form part of the next coalition government, wants to turn a former Fascist party headquarters in Como, in the Lombardy region, into northern Italy’s biggest museum of Modern art, architecture and design. — The Art Newspaper

So why is it that, as the United States has engaged in a contentious process of dismantling monuments to its Confederate past, and France has rid itself of all streets named after the Nazi collaborationist leader Marshall Pétain, Italy has allowed its Fascist monuments to survive unquestioned? — The New Yorker

...Mussolini, at least for his first decade in power, wasn’t quite as interested in architecture as his fellow dictators. While enthusiastically censoring film-makers, writers, academics and journalists, he let architects do as they please [...]

The resulting architectural output, between Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and the late 1930s, when he began to exert more control, embodies an accidentally healthy pluralism. — The Guardian

A cash shortage in Rome could see the city’s fascist-era Square Colosseum sold to the fashion house Fendi, despite calls in the Italian capital to keep the building in state hands.

More than 70 years after the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro was built under the orders of Benito Mussolini it could soon be reinvented as a home for luxury goods. — theguardian.com

The Holocaust museum planned for Rome since 2005 could open next year in a new, bigger location at EUR, named after the Esposizione Universale Roma, in time to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

After almost a decade of delay and €15m spent to acquire a plot of land, the first Museo della Shoah quietly stalled before construction even started. — theartnewspaper.com

Nuremberg plans to spend up to 70 million euro restoring the sprawling complex used by Adolf Hitler for his mass rallies, as debate continues in Germany over what to do with Nazi-era architecture.

“This is a job of national importance, we cannot take it on alone,” said Ulrich Maly, the Social Democrat mayor of the Bavarian city, who added he would ask for federal funds to complete the project. — rt.com

Over at the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne reported on LACMA Director Michael Govan’s plan’s for $650-million new building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor...Eric Chavkin commented "New construction has always been fundraising tail that wags the museum dog. Big names to draw bigger money...Now that AMPAS is leveraging it's Oscar prestige to be a part of LACMA, a new name to entice donor dollars is Zumthor, a name that means absolutely nothing to most.