Garibaldi in Narratives

Alessandro Portelli (University of Rome-La Sapienza) [BIO]

Email: Alessandro.Portelli@uniroma1.it

 

ABSTRACT:

In 1867, on his way to an attempt to liberate Rome (still under the Pope's rule), Giuseppe Garibaldi stormed the walled town of Monterotondo, fifteen miles from the city. A few days later, he was attacked and defeated by French troops that had arrived in defence of the Pope. While Monterotondo actively and fiercely resisted Garibaldi's attacks in 1867, it has since then adopted Garibaldi as a metaphor for its own libertarian and socialist tradition. On the other hand, one of Mussolini's columns in the March on Rome in 1922 also gathered in Monterotondo, and a plaque on the town gates commemorates the continuity between Garibaldi's Red Shirts and Mussolini's Black ones. The tension between Garibaldi as the bearer of an alternative, rebellious tradition on the one hand, and Garibaldi as a nationalist, ‘patriotic’ icon is also reproduced in a number of family narratives about ancestor's involvement in Garibaldi's battles: the rebellious ancestor who left home and family to join Garibaldi on the road becomes a symbol of the respectability of his descendants.