From 1923 to 1928, De Vecchi was governor of Italian Somaliland, a role which took him away from the centre of the Italian political scene. He was made Count of Val Cismon (in memory of the battles fought by his arditi on Monte Grappa in 1918). He was appointed a Senator by King Victor Emmanuel III. He became the first ambassador to the Vatican after the Concordat of 1929. Between 1935 and 1936 he was national Minister of Education: as such he promoted a historiography which identified the House of Savoy as the link between Imperial Rome and the Rome of Fascism, and also worked for the centralisation of the administration of the school system.