The era of the Dall’Ara Stadium

One hundred years ago, on 31 October 1926, a teenager fired a shot at Mussolini during a parade, a poet celebrated a futuristic sporting arena, and a city held its breath for the opening of the new stadium, known as the Littoriale. It all took place in Bologna, where the fates of so many became intertwined in a single day. The fifteen-year-old anarchist Anteo Zamboni, the alleged perpetrator of a failed assassination attempt on the Duce—who emerged unscathed—was lynched by the enraged crowd. The man who grabbed him by the arm and held him back on behalf of the Fascists was the head of security on Via Indipendenza; his name was Carlo Alberto Pasolini: he was the father of the intellectual Pier Paolo. Meanwhile, the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti composes an ode to the complex, asking: “Now then, what is it? / You have changed, civilisation / This new sports hall / is the fairest seat of you, Truth?”. The opening ceremony was organised in a matter of days, yet it was certainly not lacking in splendour. The building work, which had begun more than a year earlier, was still ongoing. But Mussolini, four years on from the March on Rome, needed to reaffirm his control over the country. And the stadium became a tool of propaganda. Photographers are warned: you would do well not to frame the unfinished sections. They have families to support, so they comply with the request of Commendatore Foschi, who chairs the Federal Directorate of Bologna. At the Littoriale, three and a half kilometres from the centre, situated at the foot of the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, amidst a riot of fascist rhetoric, “Never in the history of Italy has there been a more perfect union between the regime and the people,” Mussolini would say, accompanied by no fewer than a hundred marching bands, as the armed forces marched past in review: from the Carabinieri to the sailors, from the infantrymen to the cavalry, from the Militia centuries to the musketeers—all clad in black from their boots to their fezzes—right through to the railway troops and a contingent of colonial troops in khaki uniforms. Mussolini delivered his speech whilst mounted on horseback on a high podium of fine sand, its edges lined with grass. He said: “I wanted the closing ceremony of the Fourth March on Rome to take place in Bologna, which I have always regarded, as in the past, as the strategic quadrilateral of Italian fascism.”

The following day, reporters will write – with an emphasis dictated by the times – that at this point in the speech ‘the crowd bursts into prolonged applause’, so much so that the sun breaks through the fog and illuminates more than fifty thousand people seated across the twenty-five tiers of the stands, plus another hundred thousand standing in the vast expanse of fields surrounding the stadium. It would be hailed as the largest gathering ever held in an enclosed space. The Littoriale is not just a stadium. It is the symbol of an era. Indeed, it is described as the ‘first amphitheatre of the Fascist revolution’ and ‘the monument of the new era’.

The complex, which also includes four tennis courts and two swimming pools, was designed by engineer Umberto Costanzini and architect Giulio Ulisse Arata, but the driving force behind the project—the man who, more than anyone else, was determined that the stadium should be built in Bologna—was Leandro Arpinati, a Fascist leader at the head of the city’s squadristi and president of the FIGC. In 1926, Arpinati made Bologna the capital of Italian football; two months after the stadium’s inauguration, he was appointed city leader. Arpinati hoped that the Littoriale would become the cradle of – and I quote – “a phalanx of athletes destined for Olympic triumphs and of strong soldiers tempered by all the battles of national life”.

On the night of 31 October 1926, Arpinati received a telegram from Benito Mussolini. Referring to the failed assassination attempt, the Duce said: “Nothing can happen to me before my task is complete.”

The first football match was played at the Littoriale on 29 May of the year following its inauguration, in 1927. In front of sixty thousand spectators, including King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, Italy and Spain faced off in a friendly match, which the Azzurri won 2–0. Two weeks later, the halls beneath the stands hosted the Fiera del Littoriale, featuring exhibitions of clothing, furniture and floriculture. The Rossoblù team – which had won its first Scudetto in 1925 – left its old stadium at Sterlino, known as ‘Starlèn’ in the Bolognese dialect, in 1927 and moved to the Littoriale.

In the post-war period, the stadium was renamed ‘Comunale’, whilst the name honouring Renato Dall’Ara – the president of Bologna who, twenty years earlier, in 1964, had won the last of his seven league titles – dates back to 1984.