It is said that in his old age D'Annunzio, that pro-fascist swine, had the prow of a torpedo boat in his park. Leaving aside his patriotic motives, the idea of such a monument is not without a certain charm.
- Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman^{Ref. 1}

For the Italian fascist passing directly from the athletic record to absolute war, the intoxication of the speed-body is total; it's Mussolini's "Poetry of the bomber." For Marinetti, after D'Annunzio, the "warrior-dandy" is the "only able subject, surviving and savoring in battle the power of the human body's metallic dream"; coupling with technological equipment scarcely more cumbersome than a horse, the old metabolic vehicle of the warring elites: rapid launches or "torpedoes" straddled under the sea by aristocratic frogmen in search of the British fleet....
- Paul Virilio^{Ref. 2}

Everything here has, in fact, been created or transfigured by me. Everything here bears the stamp of my style. My love for Italy, my cult of memory, my striving after heroism, the presentiment of my country as it will come to be, all these things are embodied here, in every search for a line, in the matchings and clashings of colours.^{Ref. 3}

Figure 1: Aerial sketch of the Vittoriale Figure 2: Aerial photograph of the Vittoriale

With the guidance and assistance of architect Giancarlo Maroni, D'Annunzio would devote the last seventeen years of his life (occupying the villa from 1921 until his death in 1938) to "transfiguring" what once was a rustic farmhouse into an elaborate museum of art, books, personal mementos, and military souvenirs. This museum would preserve his legendary reputation as Italy's most famous writer, politician, soldier, and seducer of women (Figs. 1-2). Inside the walls of this miniature principality, staged rituals decided the placement of ceremonial devices that formed a vast array of objects that overflowed from the interior and spilled out into the garden. An archaeological site composed of the main house, war museum, open-air theater, battleship, mausoleum, ornamental bridges, fountains, small plazas, streets, and sacred precincts, these objects exaggerate the urban fragments that D'Annunzio scattered throughout his plays, novels, and poetry.