Tivoli, a town east of Rome, serves as both a designated staging point for the planned March on Rome and the setting for one of the operation’s stalled columns. In the days around the attempted uprising of October 1922, its wooded outskirts hold Giuseppe Bottai and men who have come from across Italy, waiting for orders that do not arrive.

A Staging Point for the March

In the plan explained by Benito Mussolini, Tivoli was one of three places near Rome where squadristi were to assemble on the night of October 27. The other gathering points were Santa Marinella and Mentana. From these locations, the forces were to take part in a coordinated mobilization aimed at winning the Fascists a place in government. Tivoli thus belonged to a military design whose intended reach extended from provincial assembly points to the capital.

Bottai’s Column in the Woods

The column near Tivoli was commanded by Giuseppe Bottai, a former Arditi officer and a leader among Rome’s squadristi. He established his command in a small hotel perched on the rocks in the Tivoli woods, with the tops of the cypress trees at Villa d’Este visible nearby. The men had little food or potable water, no money, and, most consequentially, no orders. They were told not to leave their billets, cause damage, fire their guns, or steal from local farmers, while the column’s movement remained suspended.

The wait stretched across days. Rome appeared as a hazy, distant image beneath a storm-darkened sky, while the roar of the cascades held the men’s attention. Their position near the capital suggested imminent action, but their immediate circumstances were defined by immobility and uncertainty.

The Gap Between Plan and Action

Tivoli’s role exposes the gap between the coup’s coordinated blueprint and its uneven execution. The assembly point had been assigned a place in a wider strategy, yet Bottai’s column received no signal to advance. By the morning of October 28, as a state-of-siege proclamation was being posted in Rome, the uprising in the Lazio countryside had already failed. In this account, Tivoli is not the site of a decisive clash but a point where the planned march stalled, leaving its participants waiting while events were determined elsewhere.