"Si fondano le Città"
III. Inauguration, April 15, 1934

The town was named after the royal family, the House of Savoya. The name “Sabaudia” is derived from the adjective “sabaudo,” that translates “Savoyan” or “of the House of Savoy.”[1] King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Helen of Montenegro naturally attended the inauguration ceremony. The inauguration was a big day in Italy, with both the national and the international press reporting from the new town. The regime loved to orchestrate statements including numbers and figures, phrased in such a way as to be impressive. Thus, on April 13 the first previews hit the newspapers: “Sabaudia rises between the sea and the parc of Circe” wrote Marco Franzetti for La Tribuna:
    “Sabaudia … has arisen in 250 days, and is still today a larming construction site where as many as 6,000 workers … in the end will have put in 1,200,000 work days.”[2]

Another aspect of all the propaganda emerging in relationship to the Pontine projects was the panegyric and turgid poetic manner employed to evoke idylls, bucolic and heroic impressions:
    “This one understands today, rushing across the Marshes towards Sabaudia the New, risen as a myth between the forest and the sea, where it seems as if the millennia should have forgotten a shred in the chaos of the creation.”[3]

And:
    “Thus, Sabaudia possesses a particular exquisite beauty of its own that stands out with a harmonious composition of natural elements, in which the most stupendous classicism melts together with the dreamiest romanticism. Because of these qualities it is certainly destined to become, in rapid order, a fantastically frequented tourist resort, and for that reason be added to the necklace of Italic cities and landscapes in which sparkles superiorly the august and divine face of this our immortal Fatherland.”[4]

Another major peg the system hung their strategy on was the magic of futuristic expectation. Newspapers, posters and paintings commemorated the events of the inauguration with airplanes flying over this town of rationalist modern architecture:
    “The earth, ever more irascible and swollen with a vengeance, accelerates the rhythm of its detonations baptizing with clangs of war the glass and reinforced concrete in the new edifices. These, vibrating, stir the human foliage on the balconies and terraces that call on the aeroplanes. The motors of the air swoop down at low altitude skimming the cubic forms of the architectural energy, and thereafter in squadron, turning, already entering into the smoke spreading off the shores from the fireworks down at the lake. Down below, between the flashing cores of dynamite rush workers (ex-gunners) devil-black, resembling pyrotechnic artists in a celebrative mode.”[5]

20,000 people attended the solemn festivities. There was a dominating presence of uniforms and helmets as the “soldier-farmers” from the surrounding farms and borghi were wearing the black party shirt, and helmet from the great war. The young were dressed in their Balilla-uniforms. Batallions from the marine were also present at this very austere moment in Fascist history. They were crowding on balconies and rooftops, and the streets were covered with regimented crowds and motorcars. In this crowd was a little speck of feminine presence in Her Majesty Queen Helen and a few flower girls. From the images I have seen it does not seem like the farmers’ wives attended this momentuous occasion.

Mussolini was not present at this occasion, but on the 9th of July he participated in the first threshing[6]—as he had done in Littoria the year before. He returned to Sabaudia on September 22 the same year to reward the workers, who for a long period had hired themselves out to the work in the Pontine Marshes. They received a set amount of money and a diploma. The eloquent orator Mussolini gave yet another one of his nationalist speeches:
    “In thirty years time, when the sons of your sons ask you what the document signifies that you have put in a frame in your house, you will answer like this: In the first decennium of the revolution of the blackshirts I was engaged in a grand battle to redeem from the waters and from death a vast zone of territory of the Italian fatherland. All the will of the regime, enormous mediums, a large organization and an impressive army of workers were engaged in this battle. You will remember this with a sensation of pride and honor, because you with your shovels, with your spades, with your sweat have given a new province to Italy.”[7]

After the inauguration there was still more work to be done in the streets and on the lots of Sabaudia. But by 1935 the township of Sabaudia started to function as a rural center for the ONC and other party activities. The town with all its buildings, such as they were drafted, was now changing from a construction site to a busy little rural center.

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