ON MANY Sundays of the working year, I find myself walking over some impressive mosaics in the paving stones surrounding Rome's Olympic Stadium. Fashioned into the pavement, seemingly hundreds of times, is the word "Duce", while directly in front of the stadium there is an obelisk which still bears the name "Mussolini".
Of course, the surrounds of the Olympic Stadium are testament to the memory of Italy's fascist dictator, Benito (Il Duce) Mussolini. Other such architectural memories of Mussolini are still to be found in the capital, with the most notable being the south Rome suburb of EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma).
EUR was built for an international exhibition, a kind of world trade fair due to have taken place in 1942 but, inevitably, abandoned because of the second World War. EUR is a remarkable place, conceived in a grandiose architectural style intended to glorify fascism. To modern eyes, it can seem exaggerated, heartless and vaguely sinister.
This expatriate in Rome has often wondered about the significance of these hangovers from fascist times. Do young Italians know much about the regime which produced them? Do young Italians know their own history? How strong is the neo-fascist sense of yearning for the return of the much talked of "strong man", if indeed there is such a yearning?
Such thoughts have been rekindled in the last week by a public polemic involving Italy's former royal family, the Savoia. The row began when the centre-left Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, proposed that his government remove the constitutional prohibition on the male heirs of the Savoia line returning to Italy.
Not everyone was in agreement with the proposal, with the Rifondazione Communista leader, Fausto Bertinotti, arguing that the Savoia were morally culpable for the extremes of fascist oppression. On the other hand, centre-right opposition politicians such as Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of Il Duce, welcomed the news, adding that if the Savoia were allowed to return, then the constitutional ban on re-founding Mussolini's Fascist Party should be revoked.
For those not intimately familiar with Italian history, we should point out that, with the exception of the 26-day reign of Umberto II in 1946, the last of the Savoia to reign in Italy was King Vittorio Emmanuele III, from 1900 to 1946.
As king under Il Duce, Villorio Emmanuele's constitutional role required his signature on all legislation including, most controversially, that on Mussolini's infamous 1938 racial laws, a cruel imitation of introduced by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
Mussolini's 1938 laws decreed that Jews could not become journalists, teachers or accountants. They were barred from attendance at state schools and, on occasion, had their property declared forfeit. Academics, admirals and generals lost their jobs. Il Duce Mussolini himself had to change his dentist.
Less than amusing is the consideration that nearly 8,000 Italian Jews (an admittedly small figure in the ghoulish global context of the Holocaust) were sent to concentration camps, with only 600 of them surviving.
The distinguished British historian Dennis Mack Smith suggests that, "as with all fascist legislation, these laws were carelessly and inefficiently enforced ..." (Italy, A Modern History).
No doubt, but they still were written into the statute book, complete with Vittorio Emmanuele's signature.
Against that background, imagine the fuss created last weekend when the heir to the Savoia title, also called Vittorio Emmanuele and grandson of the fascist-era king, told an Italian TV reporter that the 1938 laws "weren't so terrible".
Although Vittorio Emmanuele later tried to repair the damage, pointing out in a statement that his grandfather had opposed the laws and tried to reduce their impact and adding that he himself was opposed to "any form of anti- Semitism and racism", the cat was out of the bag.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Walter Veltroni, said that such remarks recalled the "political madness" of fascist Italy, while a leading article in the Rome daily La Repuhblica commented: "It seems that in our country a strange thesis is gaining credence - namely, that to re-find our nation hood, it is necessary to draw a veil on the past, making our history into a disgusting treacle in which everything becomes confused and in which it is impossible to tell the guilty from the victims..."
Indeed. Perhaps those mosaics at the Olympic Stadium are not just harmless historical artefacts. Perhaps they still represent a political force, alive and well and waiting its Italian moment again.