His monuments still dominate Rome’s skyline; his name is chanted at football matches and a notorious episode of his rule was recently re-enacted, complete with men dressed as SS stormtroopers. The rehabilitation of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s wartime dictator, may not yet be complete — but it is not for want of trying.

Yesterday urban planners and architectural historians from across Italy gathered in Rome to honour the “glories” of Fascist architecture. The conference, at Latina, a model “new town” created in reclaimed marshland south of Rome by Mussolini in 1932, is the brainchild of Giorgio Frasinetti, the head of urban planning at Predappio, the town in Emilia-Romagna where Il Duce was born and is buried.

Mr Frasinetti admitted that Fascism had its “ugly” aspects but he insisted that the buildings erected throughout the country under Mussolini should not be seen as an embarrassment, but deserved “re-evaluation”.The move follows the restoration of an obelisk bearing the word “Dux” (Duce) outside the Olympic Stadium in Rome and of Mussolini’s Rome residence, the Villa Torlonia. This month a “wartime enactment association” wearing Nazi uniforms re-created the rescue of Mussolini by SS commandos at Campo Imperatore in the Abruzzo mountains, where he was held after being deposed in September 1943. Massimo Castelli, head of the association, insisted that the event arose solely from a “passion for military history”.

There is, however, growing disquiet on the Left and among Jewish and Roman Catholic groups. They fear that neo-Fascists are taking advantage of a perceived shift to the right in Italy since elections last April, which brought to power a coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi. It includes not only the anti-immigrant Northern League, but also Alleanza Nazionale, the reformed descendant of Mussolini’s Blackshirts.

Mussolini’s tomb at Predappio has become a shrine for neo-Fascists, who have grown increasingly assertive, plastering Rome with far-Right posters and massing on football terraces and at political rallies with their close-cropped hair and black shirts.

In April, Gianni Alemanno of Alleanza Nazionale was elected Mayor of Rome — the first rightwinger to hold the office since the Second World War. Recently, critics have accused Mr Berlusconi — who last week announced plans to merge his Forza Italia with Alleanza Nazionale next year — of encouraging racist attacks on immigrants by blaming gypsies and illegal immigrants for street crime.

All the more surprising, then, that the man who has cried “enough” is Gianfranco Fini, the head of Alleanza Nazionale, who once described Mussolini as “the greatest statesman of the 20th century”. The Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament told a meeting of Azione Giovani, the Alleanza Nazionale youth wing, that the Italian Right had to be “unambiguously anti-Fascist”.

Mr Berlusconi predicts that, with the Left in disarray, the Centre Right will be in power for “at least ten to fifteen years”. He is 72, which would make the astute and urbane Mr Fini, at only 56, a potential successor.

What is at stake for Mr Fini is his calculated transformation of the postwar remnants of the Fascist Party into a mainstream, democratic, conservative party — and a springboard for power. He has visited Israel several times, praying at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and has forged close ties with Rome’s Jewish community.

He faces formidable resistance, however, in the form of Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Duce, who is heading a grassroots revolt. Ms Mussolini, a former model and actress who has forcefully defended her grandfather’s reputation since entering politics in 1992, and who is the niece of Sophia Loren, appeared in Parliament recently wearing a striking T-shirt reading “Proud to be on the wrong side” — a reference to those who fought for Fascism rather than Resistance during the war.

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