Colonia Amos Maramotti (Colonia Reggiana) (1934) in Riccione (Ravenna) was designed by Constantino Constantini, who also designed the famous Mussolini Dux obelisk in the Foro Italico in Rome. It was named after a student 'martyr' to the Fascist cause killed in a clash with communists in 1924. Its plan, a repetition of offset slab forms orientated towards sea and sun, and with projecting stair towers, was intended to represent an array of fasces. But the repetition of forms also implied the mechanisation of construction and the possibility of infinite extension. It was these functional aspects, rather than the representational one, which attracted Rationalist acclaim for the building.
Abandoned, it has become a repository for municipal detritus. Exploring the building we clambered over piles of children's clothes in decayed cardboard cartons and mounds of mildewed cinema seats. Under this could be seen the terrazzo floor with its design of thousands of interlocking Fs; an echo of the repeating plan of the building. Fascism was everywhere under our feet.