Casa del fascio (now: Casa del Popolo), Como

The Casa del Fascio is a build­ing lo­cated in Como, north­ern Italy, per­haps the most fa­mous work of the Italian Rationalist ar­chi­tect, Giuseppe Terragni.

Started in 1932 and com­pleted in 1936 un­der the regime of Benito Mussolini, this mu­nic­i­pal ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing was orig­i­nally con­structed with a pri­mary view of func­tion­ing as an el­e­gant »set piece« for mass Fascist ral­lies. Con­cep­tu­al­ized as a clas­si­cal palazzo cen­tred on a glass atrium, it was fres­coed with ab­stract paint­ings (since destroyed) by the artist Mario Radice and the orig­i­nal project boasted an in­no­va­tive chang­ing fa­cade il­lu­mi­na­tion. It is cited as a re­gional man­i­fes­ta­tion of the International Style of ar­chi­tec­ture.

The build­ing cur­rently houses the lo­cal head­quar­ters of the Guardia di Finanza po­lice force.

GIS co­or­di­nates: 45.812363°, 9.086022°