This story begins with 24 white seaplanes appearing above the Chicago skyline in 1933. They had flown from Italy in formation, crossing an Atlantic that only five aircraft had previously managed to cross from east to west. More than 100,000 people waited inside the World's Fair, another 20,000 packed Navy Pier. The planes circled the skyscrapers, then skimmed onto Lake Michigan one after another. "It moved everybody", one eyewitness recalled. Their commander was Italo Balbo, Mussolini's Air Marshal and one of the men who had helped Fascism take power. The flight was a dazzling advertisement for the regime. It was also a source of pride for Italian immigrants accustomed to seeing their country associated with poverty and crime. For a day, Chicago was cheering Italian skill. Mussolini sent the column the following year. It came from the ruins of Ostia, ancient Rome's port. Its inscription praises Balbo's squadron for crossing the ocean with Roman daring. Mussolini wanted Americans to connect the two: the Rome of the emperors and the Italy building airplanes. Nearly a century later, Chicago cannot figure out where the gift belongs. Museums declined it in the 1990s because it did not fit their collections. Protesters have demanded its removal. A city task force recommended storage in 2022; four years later, the Park District had no plans to move it. The obvious solution - to pick it up and put it somewhere else - could destroy it. Ninety Chicago winters have opened tiny cracks throughout the stone. A conservator warned that relocation would be dangerous, while restoration and a glass shelter could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So, the monument from Mussolini remains beside a football stadium, behind a chain-link fence. The fence keeps people away. It does nothing about the Chicago winters, which may end up settling the argument on behalf of the city.