The FAO Building ( it, Palazzo FAO, literally "FAO Palace") is the international headquarters of the

Food and Agriculture Organization The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

(FAO), located in the San Saba

rione A (; plural: ) is a neighbourhood in several Italian cities. A is a territorial subdivision. The larger administrative subdivisions in Rome are the , with the being used only in the historic centre. The word derives from the Latin , the 14 su ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. Originally built under the Fascist government of Italy in the 1930s to be the seat of the Ministry of Italian Africa, the building was repurposed after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

to be the headquarters of the then-new

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

' agricultural agency, the FAO. The building is located the in one of the most scenic parts of Rome, southeast of the

Aventine Hill The Aventine Hill (; la, Collis Aventinus; it, Aventino ) is one of the Seven Hills on which ancient Rome was built. It belongs to Ripa, the modern twelfth ''rione'', or ward, of Rome. Location and boundaries The Aventine Hill is the sou ...

, and overlooking the

Baths of Caracalla The Baths of Caracalla ( it, Terme di Caracalla) in Rome, Italy, were the city's second largest Ancient Rome, Roman public baths, or ''thermae'', after the Baths of Diocletian. The baths were likely built between AD 212 (or 211) and 216/217, durin ...

and the

Circus Maximus The Circus Maximus (Latin for "largest circus"; Italian: ''Circo Massimo'') is an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium and mass entertainment venue in Rome, Italy. In the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, it was the first and lar ...

History

The building was designed in 1938 by Vittorio Cafiero, the designer of the city plan of

Asmara Asmara ( ), or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region. It sits at an elevation of , making it the sixth highest capital in the world by altitude and the second highest capital in Africa. The ...

, and Mario Ridolfi, one of the masters of

Italian Rationalism In architecture, Rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work ''De architectura'' that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. The formu ...

, and was originally designated to be the seat of the Ministry of Italian Africa: this was named until 1937, the year of the

Italian conquest of Ethiopia The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Itali ...

, the Ministry of the Colonies, and was abolished in 1953. In front of the enormous building a four lane avenue was opened; it was named "Viale Africa" after it, and renamed "

Viale Aventino Viale Aventino is a street that links Piazza di Porta Capena and Piazza Albania in Rome (Italy). It marks the boundary between the Rioni of Rome, Rione Ripa (rione of Rome), Ripa (towards the Aventine Hill) and San Saba (rione of Rome), San Saba ( ...

", after the hill which faces the building, in 1945. The palace was still unfinished when Italy surrendered to the allies in September 1943. The construction works, now directed only by Cafiero, started again in 1947, and the building was supposed to host the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication After the decision to assign the edifice to FAO, the building was enlarged, and work was finished in 1952. The Italian State endowed to the building the right of

extraterritoriality In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cla ...

, and rented it to FAO for the symbolic rate of one

US dollar The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

, to be paid yearly in advance. In 1937, after the invasion of Ethiopia, Italian army specialists had brought to Rome the second longest Stele among the many existing in

Axum Axum, or Aksum (pronounced: ), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire, a naval and trading power that ruled the whole region ...

. The 4th-century monolith, which in Ethiopia lay for centuries on the ground and was broken in several pieces, was erected in front of the area designated to host the Ministry of Italian Africa building, in order to show the usage of the new complex. In 2005, after restoration, the

stele A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

was taken back to Ethiopia and erected in Axum by the Italian Government.

Notes

{{coord, 41.8827, N, 12.4886, E, source:wikidata, display=title Buildings and structures completed in 1952

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

Italian fascist architecture Rome R. XXI San Saba