A NEW CITY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 320, 6 September 1932, Page 7

A NEW CITY

MUSSOLINI DECREES THAT ROME SHALL BE REBUILT. Rome, which was not huilt in one day, is to be rebuilt in five years, for Mussolini has said so. He does not intend to destroy the Rome of Caesar or the Rome of the Popes; but he intends to move the slums which clutter the city and conceal much of the architecture of the two older cities, says the Montreal Daily Star. This decision to rebuild the city was arrived at by Mussolini without the aid of any royal commissions or other committees. Mussolini consulted some architects and administrators to give him a plan of a new Rome. The plan was to be completed in six months, and it was completed. Th'en the Duce issued his decree. In addition to a vast scheme of slum clearance, the plan includes underground railways and underground roads. Motor speedways will cleave the city north to south and east to west. Parks will surround it in a belt and this belt will be connected with the circuses of Caesar in the centre of the city. Rome is to be made into a seaport hy the excavation of a canal 15 miles to the sea, and a great harbour is to he huilt near the city. The present railway station is to be razed to the ground and two new ones will take its place. Mussolini realises th'at Rome, with no industries of her own, must depend almost wholly for her well-being on tourists. For that reason alone, if for no other, he has arranged to preserve all that is ancient and honourahle and to destroy all that is merely oid and ugly.