Il rifugio ipogeo del monte Soratte

In the bowels of Monte Soratte, located a few kilometres north of Rome, there is one of the most significant examples of military engineering in Italy. In this place, in a strategic and dominant position over the Tiber valley, on the edge of the town of Sant'Oreste, a vast underground structure was built, in 1937 and at the behest of Mussolini, officially to accommodate a Breda Factory, the Officine protette, but in reality, most likely, to ensure, to the highest offices of the State and the Italian Army, security in the event of an enemy attack. The entire work, including the protection and the reinforced concrete lining of the tunnels, was carried out under direction of the Military Engineers of Rome, at a very fast pace, in just four and half years, using both local and northern Italian workers. The entire underground structure was excavated in the limestone using explosives and recovering the material to build the barracks placed outside, to produce the inert necessary for the concrete of the vault lining of the tunnels and to fill the external slopes in order to create an easy access route. When the works had not yet been completed, the Breda plant in Torre Gaia was partly transferred to the inner part of the underground complex, which was occupied by German troops immediately afterwards, in 1943. After the retreat, in 1944, the refuge was abandoned and then, in the Sixties, it was partly transformed into a nuclear bunker for Italian Government, but in 1972 the work was suspended leaving the structure incomplete. In 2001, the Italian Military Property Office decommissioned the external area and the barracks, and then, in 2007, the hypogeum complex. Currently only three of the five barracks have been refurbished and the place, highly suggestive, is home to a widespread Historical Museum of Monte Soratte. This article aims to be a contribution to the deepening, mainly from a constructive point of view, of the knowledge of the refuge that remains, still today, one of the most interesting Italian works of modern military engineering.