Abstract
As in other administrative centers of Italy’s African colonies, city plans were drawn up for Mogadishu, the colonial capital of Somalia Italiana, through the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. Expanding it beyond its ancient quarters, these (only ever partly realized) plans sought to reorganize the city, introducing road networks and modernist Italian architecture that have continued to define it ever since. This study charts the history of one building, the Fascist Party headquarters inaugurated in 1938 which was repurposed—both before and after independence in 1960—by five different political administrations in as many decades before ultimately being destroyed in the civil war which broke out in the capital in 1990–91. Taking the fact that the Parliament was housed in this colonial era building, I suggest the institutions of the postcolonial state were heavily conditioned by those of the former colonial power. Drawing on oral history interviews and other media, this article will also interpret the ways the iconic building is represented in retrospective reflections as a form of “re-memberment,” the use of recollection not only to reconstruct a lost past but also offer visions of how a fragmented nation may be reconstituted, a tacit attempt to reverse feelings of dismemberment.
