The Palazzo Giustiniano, home to the Italian Senate, has recently become the focal point of an old judicial dispute. Two parties are involved: the Grand Orient of Italy (GOI), the country’s oldest and most controversial Masonic lodge network since 1805, and the Italian state. The lodge owned the iconic building from 1911 until it was expropriated in 1925, when Italy was still a kingdom. For years, masons have pursued legal action to reclaim the property, and a court has just opened a route for their fight not to be reduced to a page of history.
The outcome remains uncertain, but the case has exposed that the principal Italian Masonic body is no longer in the shadows. After years of notoriety tied to a string of scandals, the Grand Orient’s members now appear to be seeking to restore prestige and, in the process, normalize their presence in Italy. It is a difficult undertaking in a country wary of such organizations.
The reason for the lingering stigma is that the GOI’s reputation has been under scrutiny since the 1980s, when one of its secret lodges, the P2 (Propaganda Due), faced accusations of shady financial dealings, clandestine operations, illegal contacts with the CIA and with Latin American autocracies, and even neo-fascist coup attempts. Since then, laws and state guidelines have tried to curb the presence of Freemasonry in Italy. Some lodges have been accused of links to Italian mafia groups.
Respect
But a shift may be underway. In the Senate case, for instance, a notable development emerged: the Italian Supreme Court accepted a request from the lodge that had previously dashed hopes of reclaiming the building. Rather than settling the matter in a civil framework, the Court determined that the issue should be decided by Italian administrative courts. Those tribunals will decide whether the Italian state occupied the Senate building illegitimately and therefore should return it to the Grand Orient.
The judicial setback for Italian institutions has been welcomed by Stefano Bisi, who led the Grand Orient for years before recently being succeeded by Antonio Seminario following a tight leadership election. Bisi has framed the broader effort as a matter of “respect,” arguing that the main aim is to secure a space inside the Senate to host a museum dedicated to Italian Freemasonry, with artifacts including Garibaldi relics.
“If the administrative courts side with us, as the Supreme Court did, we won’t eject anyone from Palazzo Giustiniano, not even the current president, the conservative Ignazio La Russa,” Bisi said in conversation with the Milan daily Il Corriere della Sera. “Moreover, we are even prepared to donate the building to the state,” he added, arguing that the expropriation carried out during the fascist era was improper because the purchase act had never been repealed by their side.
Judicial Storm
Yet the dispute is not the only confrontation the Grand Orient has revived in recent years, sometimes yielding favorable outcomes. It has also pursued a series of lawsuits to block Italian institutions from requiring public office candidates to disclose membership in masonic lodges, a practice the lodges view as discriminatory. The state considers such disclosures a safeguard against repeats of 1980s scandals.
A notable example is a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) concerning a notice by a Tuscany court about forensic experts. The ECHR ruled that it is illegitimate to ask candidates for such positions whether they belong to Freemasonic lodges. The court ordered Italy to pay 1,500 euros plus costs, though the penalty was reduced since the notice was later removed.
Equally telling is the current health of the Grand Orient, evidenced by its numbers. Although not the sole Italian lodge, the Grand Orient presides over a prominent headquarters on the Gianicolo hill in Rome, with some 860 lodges across Italy and more than 23,000 members. That is up roughly 19,000 since the 1960s and about 5,000 since 2007. While the group still does not admit women, the yearly intake of new members runs about 600, according to the organization’s data.
Massimo Rizzardini, a Milan professor and author of the book En the East of Italy, recently observed that secrecy, time-honored rites, and the possibility of stepping into a world separate from everyday life hold a certain appeal and influence for some. In contrast, other researchers note practical incentives—people seeking to advance careers or business prospects by meeting influential contacts within lodges.