In the 1930s, Southern Lazio was a mosquito-infested, malaria-riddled, miserable, soggy, randomly populated dump not worthy of life other than insects and Nazis. In 1928, the population in this entire region was all of 1,637 people, most of whom lived in shanties across the boggy fields.

The Red Cross investigated and reported that 80 percent of the people who spent one night in the marsh developed malaria. Then came Mussolini. Named prime minister in 1922, he directed Alessandro Messea, the director-general of the department of health, to, pardon the expression but take this literally, “drain the swamp.” Mussolini took the plan to Parliament in 1929 and the next year cleared the scrub forest.

He constructed 10,700 miles of canals and trenches, dredged the rivers, dyked the river banks, filled the holes and built pump stations. The last channel, the one that leads to the Tyrrhenian Sea, was dubbed Mussolini Canal. Soon, cute little towns started popping up, such as Latina in 1932. In 1933, the project employed 124,000 people. Many were poor from the Veneto region near Venice.

When the project was completed, 2,000 families were settled in two-story houses and given a farmhouse, an oven, a plough, a stable, cows and land. The original name Littoria comes from the term fascio littorio. Fasces is an Italian symbol Ancient Rome took from the Etruscans symbolizing a Roman king’s power to punish his subjects.