Exactly 100 years ago, the most beautiful Constitution ever was born.

Merely my opinion, of course. But I challenge anyone to read the original text of what was perhaps the most daring constitutional experiment of the twentieth century and not be amazed, literally, by its beauty.

Beautiful because it is more democratic (in the sense of a true “government of the People”), because it is more guarantee of rights, because it is more sophisticated and elegant, because it is more attentive to the man than to the citizen.

And, above all, beautiful because it advocates beauty.

First of all, a brief historical note. The city of Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia), following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, despite the initial promises made to the Italian State on the eve of its entry into the war on the side of the Triple Entente, was declared a Free State.

In 1919, the volunteer troops of the poet-soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio, 2600 men, mostly Italian veterans of the Great War, a heterogeneous group of volunteers from the most disparate cultural, social and political backgrounds, entered the city militarily.

As a first step, the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy was declared.

The love was not reciprocated though. The Italian government, worried about the impact that this act of force would have on the international community (in the guise of the newly formed “League of Nations”), did not recognize the annexation.

Rome even sent the army to occupy the supply lines towards that strip of territory between the Balkans and “The Boot”.

What was needed to get out of this impasse was obtaining a sort of international recognition.

On 8 September 1920, D’Annunzio himself proclaimed, in front of a cheering crowd (as it would have been in vogue for a few more decades), the Italian Regency of Carnaro.

Now, truth to be told, the state was nothing but a dictatorship, at least from a purely political point of view. But of that bold, grotesque and pretentious experience we are left with, at least, that pearl of constitutional law and political philosophy that was its Constitution: the Charter of Carnaro.

The Charter did not provide for any discrimination whatsoever.

Everyone was equal before the law.

It guaranteed full freedom to sovereign citizenship, “without distinction of sex, race, language, class, religion”.

Without distinction of sex: The Charter guaranteed the right to vote (active and passive) to women, when the great Democratic powers (with very few exceptions) were still far from taking this step. Divorce and equal pay between men and women were also recognized.

Without distinction of race: all citizens “belonging to other communities who ask to be part of the new state” were entitled to citizenship if requested in accordance with the law.

Without distinction of language: public schools had to guarantee “the teaching of the various idioms spoken throughout the Italian Regency of Carnaro”.

Without distinction of class: education and health were guaranteed to the citizen regardless of his economic capacity.

Without distinction of religion: because “Every religious cult is admitted, respected, and allowed to erect its own places of worship”.

And again, the fundamental freedoms: of thought, of the press, of assembly and association. An ante-litteram “welfare”, which defended the disabled, the elderly, the involuntary unemployed. A guaranteed minimum wage “sufficient to live well”.

And private property, the center of the most bitter socio-political debates and clashes? (Don’t forget, we are in the 1920s)

Private property was justified only by work, seen as “the only legitimate title of dominion over any means of production and exchange”; he was therefore entitled to own a property only to the extent that it was exploited and “well disposed”, fruitful both for the individual and for the community. “Only work is the master of the substance made maximally fruitful and maximally profitable to the general economy”.

Work was assigned a social function: it was the fruit of the individual’s creativity for the benefit of the whole community. Neglect of property was a wrong to the city; an ugliness that does endager the urban aesthetic. In what is perhaps the most famous passage of the Charter: “work, even the humblest, even the darkest, if well done, tends to beauty and adorns the world”.

Public education, “the instrument more helpful than any other against the insidious plots that have encircled her for centuries (…); the preservative against corruption; the buttress against ruin”. Excluding the rhetoric, education was considered necessary for the creation of the citizenship, and for this reason it was given enormous importance. Public education was guaranteed, in decent buildings and free from political emblems or other signs of religious denomination. A secular and apolitical school in which personal conscience was held in great esteem, so much so as to mention the freedom for the individual to “make his or her tacit prayer”.

The corporations, that is the way in which the productive apparatus of the newborn City-State was stratified. They were associations that brought together the workers of a given sector (there were ten in all), who sat with equal dignity regardless of their position: “Whatever be the kind of work a man does, whether of hand or brain, art or industry, design or execution, all are necessarily registered in one of the ten Corporations”.

Among the corporations, the most striking is the tenth. “Reserved for the mysterious forces of progress and adventure; (…) a sort of votive offering to the genius of the unknown, to the appearance of the very new man, to the ideal transfigurations of works and days, to the liberation of the spirit of man beyond the panting effort and bloody sweat”. A haughty and hazy description: an idea conceived by Freemason ideals (the Freemasons’ imprint was very strong in the “Fiume endeavor”. And many of their money financed this one…) to symbolize the “faith in progress” and a push propulsive to the refinement of the intellectual abilities of the Man, with the aim of realizing a world, predicted decades later by the transhumanist movement, in which scientific discoveries, along with a new conscience and a new ethics, would free the population from the yoke of fatigue.

In fact, the motto of the tenth corporation was “labour without effort”.

What happened to the Carnaro Charter? After only one hundred days, in which the continuous State of emergency did not allow its full implementation, the political experiment was wiped out by the bayonets of the Italian Army.

Fiume once again became a “Free State” for a few more years, until the Fascist Regime, more for the prestige than for ethnic or geopolitical reasons, decided to appropriate it.

But that’s another story…

There are three articles of belief which take precedence of all others in the Province and the federated communes:

Life is a good thing, it is fit and right that man, reborn to freedom, should lead a life that is noble and serious; a true man is he who, day by day, renews the dedication of his manhood to his fellowmen; labour, however humble and obscure, if well done adds to the beauty of the world.