Don't mention Il Duce: Europe's leaders meet at Mussolini's spiritual home

The leaders of Europe meet today close to a secret bunker designed by the Italian dictator Mussolini to enable him to survive wartime air raids.

The bunker shown to the media for the first time is in the town of Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR), which was conceived by Mussolini. It has spruced itself up for today's European summit at the Palazzo dei Congressi.

At the Palazzo degli Uffici, the administrative heart of EUR, a heavy steel door in the basement leads to Il Duce's retreat. Unlike Hitler, he never had cause to use it. But the bunker, unknown even to Italian historians of the Second World War, is still in good condition.

Professor Mauro Miccio, managing director of EUR, now a government-owned limited company, said he intended to open it to the public. Given the recent statement in The Spectator by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, that Mussolini "never killed anybody" the assembled leaders will be happy to keep the generalissimo's name out of their talks.

Yet they will meet at a place haunted by his spirit. EUR was conceived by Mussolini in the mid-1930s as the site for his planned World Fair of 1941-42, to display "the spiritual and material accomplishments of various nations". By nations he meant Italy. And it is one of the peculiarities of Italian Fascism, in contrast to Nazism and Bolshevism, that it worked with some of the country's best architects and artists.

Fascism's monumental architectural style, Rationalism, was inspired by classical Rome and European Modernism. Mussolini's fateful decision to ally himself with Hitler in the Second World War meant that the expo never happened, and the site was not completed. But even as war began the most striking buildings were in place, including the domed Palazzo dei Congressi.

In the 1950s work on EUR resumed and it is now the most modern commercial centre in the capital - the closest thing Rome possesses to a Canary Wharf or La Défènse. The new owners hope to convince foreign businesses of its benefits.

Yet the area's historical origins are stubbornly present. The exterior of the Palazzo degli Uffici is covered with an immense bas-relief that depicts Mussolini saluting while astride a horse. After his fall, the dictator's image was defaced. But during the rehabilitation of Fascism over the past decade the face was restored.

In the basement of the same building are three immense bronze heads, at least four feet high, of a scowling Il Duce. If ever they are put back outside, it would be the clearest sign yet that he is back in business.