L'archeologia cristiana al servizio di PIo IX: la catacomba in fac-simile di Giovanni Battista De Rossi all'Esposizione Universale di Parigi del 1867

At the Great Exhibition in Paris (1867), the Holy See, despite the heavy losses of its territory, challenged the new Kingdom of Italy on the terrain of cultural identity. Just a few feet from one another, Italy welcomed its visitors to Antonio Cipolla’s neo-Renaissance pavilion, intended as a tribute to Florence, the capital of the new nation; the Papal State presented to the world a replica of the Catacombs, faithfully reproduced by the most acclaimed Christian archaeologist of the time, Giovanni Battista de Rossi. The comparison could not have been more crushing. While Italy, by exploiting the international prestige of the Florentine Renaissance, promoted the principles of the Risorgimento, the Holy See revealed the arguments for its counter-Risorgimento, by symbolically evoking the archaic lure of the Christian catacombs. In the “phantasmagorical microcosm of capitalist c u l t u re” - as Walter Benjamin famously dubbed the 1867 exhibition - Rome presented itself to the world as the martyr of modernity. This contribution explores the event, presenting new documentary evidences in the context of the cultural strategies promoted by pope Pius IX.