Main Focus
- Relationship between arts and architecture in the first half of the twentieth century
- Public and civic building types as instruments of representation and identity
- Architecture and cultural diplomacy of fascism abroad
- Afterlife and reception of decorative and architectural motifs of the Ventennio
- History of exhibitions, difficult heritage, and colonial and identity-related themes
Research project
Curriculum Vitae
Maria Stella Di
Trapani is a postdoctoral researcher at the Weddigen Department of the
Bibliotheca Hertziana, where she has been conducting research since 2025 on the
Case d’Italia of
Clemente Busiri Vici, dedicated to the architecture of Fascist cultural
diplomacy abroad. She graduated in Art History from the Università Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore in Milan and obtained her PhD in Art and Architectural History
from the University of Palermo with a thesis on the Palazzi di Giustizia in
Sicily, published as a monograph in 2025 (I palazzi di giustizia in Sicilia.
Arte e architettura nell’Italia fascista, Edizioni Caracol). In 2026 she obtained the National
Scientific Habilitation (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) as Associate
Professor (competition sector 08/E2 – Restoration and History of Architecture).
She was a research fellow at the University of Catania within the Census of
Italian Architecture from 1945 to the Present (Ministry of Culture) and a
member of its research unit in the projects SPAZIDENTITÀ (École française
de Rome) and PRIN 2022 Building Civic Identities (University of Genoa). In the
academic years 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 she was a contract lecturer in History
of Architecture and, in 2025-2026, also in Contemporary Architectural History
and Contemporary Art History, at the University of Catania (Catania and
Siracusa campuses); in 2023 she won the Gianni Franzone Scholarship
(Wolfsoniana Study Center, Genoa). Her research interests include the
relationship between arts and architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, building types of public power as devices of identity and civic
representation, the iconography and memory of the architectural heritage of the
Fascist period, rural foundation villages in Sicily, and the history of
exhibitions, with attention to colonial and identity-related themes.