One of the few positive things to come out of Benito's Mussolini's regime was the social projects it funded, which resulted in an improvedhealth care infrastructure; better schools and an education for those who had never dreamed of it before, and a magnificient national highway and rail network. At a glance an onlooker might have seen these projects as the benign and generous works of a state working for the benefit of the "common people," as Mussolini's rhetoric had it. However, these massive public works were also a way to extend the Fascist state's sphere of control into every corner of Italian society. These two items illustrate some specific public works from is period: the new train station in Florence at Santa Maria Novella (1935, middle and right) and schools for farmers in the agricultural regions around Rome (1928, left).