Rome's 20th-century landmarks and monuments mainly reflect fascism's ambitions and its tragic conclusion in the final years of the war. Many of these are still part of the city's fabric, but not all are signposted. The same anonymity marks many of the places that are associated with the political conflicts of recent decades.

Mussolini's balcony, Palazzo Venezia

As the traffic races round the Piazza Venezia, and brave pedestrians gather courage to cross it, it is perhaps hard to imagine that this was the most sacred of all the places that fascism sought to turn into symbols of its power. Mussolini delivered all his most important speeches, including the declaration of the Italian empire in May 1936, from its balcony (pictured above). During the regime, large fascist symbols adorned either side of it. Today, the prime minister's office is located off the Via del Corso in Palazzo Chigi, and Palazzo Venezia is a museum containing art works, pottery and tapestries from the medieval period. The Sala del Mappamondo, where the dictator had his office, can be visited only during special exhibitions.
• Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia, Via del Plebiscito, 118, +39 06 699 94284, museopalazzovenezia.beniculturali.it . Open Tue-Sun 8.30am-7.30pm

The Victor Emmanuel monument

Derided variously by Romans as a giant typewriter, wedding cake or urinal, the astonishingly hyperbolic monument to united Italy's first king (who refused to give up his title as Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy) looks directly on to Piazza Venezia. Completed in 1911, over 30 years after the monarch's death, in time for the 50th anniversary of national unification, it features at the centre the Altar of the Fatherland and the tomb of the unknown soldier. During the day, visitors wander all over the monument and some visit the art exhibitions and the national history museum at the rear. At night it is spectacularly illuminated.
• Piazza Venezia, 3, +39 06 699 1718. Open daily 9.30am-7pm

EUR

The EUR quarter at the end of underground line B today is mainly a business district. It was planned to host the Universal Exposition of Rome in 1942 that never took place due to the war. The supreme example of fascist town planning, it features several important public buildings, the most significant of which is the brilliant white Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro, or "square colosseum", whose arches symbolise the number of letters in Mussolini's first name and surname. A modernist re-imagining of the symmetrical lines of Roman roads and architecture, the quarter was completed after the war by the same architects who had been commissioned by the dictatorship. It hosts the Ethnographic Museum and the Museum of the High Middle Ages, as well as the State Archives.
• Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro, Quadratto della Concordia Ostiense. Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi, +39 06 549521, pigorini.beniculturali.it. Open (11 July-9 Sep) Tue-Thurs 9am-7pm, Mon, Fri, Sat 9am-1.30pm

Foro Italico

If the EUR is a prime example of fascist modernism, then the Foro Italico (formerly Foro Mussolini) stands as testimony to the regime's romance with ancient Rome. Its continued existence shows more starkly than anything else the survival of the dictatorship's architectural heritage in the contemporary city. With a huge marble obelisk reading Mussolini Dux at the entrance, its pièce de resistance is the Stadio dei Marmi sports stadium which features 60 marble statues of nude muscular male athletes, each one standing for an Italian province. Examples of the twin fascist obsession with the masculine ideal and sport, they were saved from destruction by the Allies at the end of the war and the stadium was absorbed into the complex of buildings created for the 1960 Rome Olympics.
• Viale del Foro Italico, 32 Ottaviano-San Pietro, +39 06 368 58218

San Lorenzo district

One of Rome's working-class quarters and a notorious hotbed of anti-fascist sentiment, the San Lorenzo district, located on either side of the Via Tiburtina near the Termini station, was heavily bombed in July 1943 with the aim of disrupting the railway system. The only area to suffer in this way, the bombing left many dead and destroyed or damaged several significant buildings. Today the area, which is located near Rome's La Sapienza University, has a youthful, easy-going vibe, but the signs of that night in 1943 remain. Bomb damage can still be seen and the barber's shop on Via dei Volsci also functions as a photographic museum of the destruction. Pope Pius XII's pastoral visit in the aftermath is marked by a statue of the pontiff with his arms raised.
• Gaetano Bordoni barber's shop, 108 Via dei Volsci

Fosse Ardeatine

The massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine was the greatest atrocity of the Nazi occupation of Rome. On the night of 24 March 1944, 335 Italians were executed in reprisal for an attack by communist partisans on a column of German policemen in which 28 of them were killed. Each hostage was shot in the back of the head and tipped into the caves. Ordered by Hitler and led by Herbert Kappler, the commandant of the Rome security police, the action was conducted in secret and the caves sealed. Today the site is a national monument and a ceremony involving the leading authorities of the state is held every year on the anniversary. A memorial cemetery is open to visitors.
• Museo della Fosse Ardeatine, Via Ardeatina, anfim.it. Open Mausoleum, Mon-Fri 8.15am-3.30pm, Sat-Sun 8.15am-4.30pm; museum Mon-Fri 8.15am-3.15pm, Sat-Sun 8.15am-4.15pm

Verano cemetery

The Verano cemetery on the edge of the San Lorenzo district is Rome's largest. Dating back to the early 19th century, it features a Jewish cemetery, a Catholic cemetery, a monument to the victims of the first world war, and a rather spooky communist mausoleum in which the leading lights of the party in the postwar years, including long-serving party leader Palmiro Togliatti, are interred. Many of Rome's favourite sons are buried here, one of the latest being the much-loved comic film actor Alberto Sordi, whose name has been conferred on the former Galleria Colonna shopping arcade on the Via del Corso.
• Verano Monumental Cemetery, Record and Research Centre, Piazzale del Verano. Free guided tours available +39 06 492 36330/36349. Open daily (1 Oct-31 March) 7.30am-6pm, (1 April - 30 September) 7.30am-7pm

Via Veneto

After filming at the Cinecittà studios, the stars were accustomed to socialise in the Via Veneto, home to Rome's top hotels and numerous bars and restaurants. The American actors who descended on the city during the heyday of Hollywood on the Tiber in the 1950s made it their playground. The paparazzi were born here and Fellini featured the road (albeit rebuilt in the studio) in La Dolce Vita. Today plaques commemorate the road's appearances in the movies and the bars exhibit photographs of the time when their customers included Audrey Hepburn, Kim Novak, and Richard Burton. You won't find any stars there today, but the Via Veneto still exudes a certain faded glamour.
• Via Venetoo

Via Caetani

The killing of former prime minister Aldo Moro in May 1978 was one of the political watersheds of recent decades. Kidnapped by the Red Brigades, in an action that resulted in the deaths of his four bodyguards, Moro was the architect of a possible "historic compromise" between the governing Christian Democrats and the then-powerful Italian Communist party. Following his murder after 55 days of imprisonment, his body was dumped in a Renault 4 parked outside the contemporary history library in Via Caetani, a narrow street equally distant from the headquarters of the two main parties. Today a plaque marks his "barbarous killing" and "sacrifice".
• The Aldo Moro plaque is located between numbers 8 and 9 Via Caetani

Palazzo Grazioli

No politician since Mussolini has been as controversial as current prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. His Rome residence of Palazzo Grazioli, in Via della Gatta, hit the news in 2010 after it was revealed that he had allegedly hosted numerous parties there to which a mixture of showgirls, handpicked teenagers and prostitutes had been invited, with Berlusconi often being the only man present. Although the main allegations that surfaced about "bunga bunga" parties concerned his Milan socialising, Rome also featured prominently. There is nothing to see at Palazzo Grazioli, but it is common to find groups of passers-by in the street commenting on the notorious goings-on.
• Palazzo Grazioli, Via della Gatta

• Stephen Gundle is professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of several books on Italy, including Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s, published by Canongate