Travelling along the coast. The revelation of the Sicilian war architectures

Abstract

In his work, Jaime Lerner argues that a good acupuncture is “almost always a spark that initiates an action, and the subsequent propagation of that action” (Lerner, 2003). Acupunctures are small and punctual interventions aimed at generating much wider effects from their own scale of implementation; they are actions to promote the cultural identity of a place, designed to induce behaviours of discovery and knowledge of the territory itself. These are principles that could find perfect fulfilment in Sicily, a region rich in architectural testimonies peculiar to our history: the war architectures of the Second World War. These are small buildings, extraordinary control stations, called pillboxes and casemates, which for reasons clearly strategic and to optimize the views of the territory, are often found along the coast. This article proposes the conception of thematic itineraries that, through a network of pillboxes, promote the enhancement of the landscape and of the architectures themselves. These architectural objects are, in fact, an extraordinary part of our heritage that can aspire to become new tools for narrating places, of history and of what has been and what is war in the collective memory.