EUR (Exposizione Universale di Roma) was the brainchild of Mussolini, designed to showcase Fascist modernity. Conceived in the 1930s as the first step in an expansion programme that envisaged extending Rome to the sea, this new district was developed in the early 1940s, an exercise in town planning and architecture by a regime obsessed by the monumental and rationalist power. War brought the project to a premature close. EUR's museums and ambience redolent of its period merit a visit to the area.