On 24 May 1915, the Kingdom of Italy entered the First World War with a series of territorial claims established by the London Pact regarding Trentino, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia. Fiume was to be the remaining outlet to the Adriatic of a downsized Austro-Hungarian Empire deprived of Trieste, its main maritime port. The irruption onto the political scene of the principle of self-determination of peoples, the implosion of the dual monarchy and the birth of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the claims of Italianity by Andrea Ossoinack (the last representative of the capital of Carnaro in the Parliament of Budapest) and the Italian National Council of Fiume on 30 October 1918 and the contribution of irredentist volunteers from Fiume in the ranks of the Royal Army changed the situation.

At the Peace Conference, Italy then asked for the respect of the London Pact plus Fiume, thus arriving at an impasse that only bilateral negotiations between Rome and Belgrade could have resolved. The entry into Fiume of Gabriele d'Annunzio at the head of his Legionaries on 12 September 1919, however, gave rise to a new phase, in which the Adriatic location became the city of life, a crossroads of passions and political projects, of national aspirations and socialist temptations.

This effervescent microcosm was discussed in Gorizia at a conference organized by Coordinamento Adriatico APS and of which the volume edited by Davide Rossi “La città di vita cento anni dopo. Fiume, d'Annunzio e il lungo Novecento adriatico” (Wolters Kluwer, Milan 2020) represents the Proceedings. As part of the activities it carries out at the Casa del Ricordo, the Provincial Committee of Rome of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia organized the presentation of this volume on May 24, 2021 (on the anniversary of Italy's entry into the war), involving some of the authors who contributed to it. The videoconference can be reviewed on the YouTube channel of the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Culture of Trieste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilZ3atxumug