Military : architectures and conflicts

Giovanni Marco Chiri;Donatella Fiorino

2021-01-01

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Abstract

When reading the events that have crossed the Archipelago of La Maddalena, one can be legitimately surprised. La Maddalena is understandable on a globe. Every time history chose a parallel or a meridian to divide civilizations and nations, the island was there in the centre: between Europe and Africa, between the West and the East. Disregarding this geography is neither possible nor meaningful. La Maddalena was not only a stronghold or a port, but it was also much more: a battleship anchored off the northern Tyrrhenian to garrison those routes that the Phoenicians already traced to connect the East to Massalia. As a garrison of that point, the Bocche di Bonifacio, the island kept the Pillars of Hercules of the modern era. Everything in La Maddalena refers to this relationship. These traces, these artefacts are now useless: the deserted coastal forts, the empty barracks, the abandoned batteries, the workshops and the building sites, the heroes’ hermitages, the dictators’ prisons, are the mirror of a much larger world than the archipelago and much more complex and dangerous than that those who visit that paradise for tourism want to forget about for a week or two. And yet this extraordinary landscape system can find meaning and purpose in the world of today, far from the war needs that have produced it over the centuries.