Transizioni odonomastiche al confine. Il caso di Trieste (1919-1965)

The essay reconstructs the variations in the names of streets and squares in Trieste in the years between the twenty-year fascist period and the first decades of republican Italy, through World War II and the Allied military government (1945-1954). Trieste appears as a micro-laboratory of European history in the first half of the 20th century: in a border context, where memory policies have to deal with a variety of national and linguistic groups, the urban space reflects important political, ideological and cultural dynamics. The names of streets and squares are meant to exalt an ‘Italianness’ that is adopted by the ruling class as a pillar of the legitimisation of power and the mechanisms of nationalisation of the masses. Together with the differences between the different phases and the strong ideological pressure experienced especially during the twenty years of Fascism, the strong threads of continuity of a politics of memory emerge, the implications of which sometimes reach as far as the present time.