Gli zuccherifici dell’Italia centro meridionale, invarianti e declinazioni di tipo e costruzione per l’industria saccarifera

The Italian sugar industry was born in the late 1800s after almost one century of failed attempts all over the national territory, thanks to the positive experience of the Swiss entrepreneur Emilio Maraini in Rieti, driving force behind the start-up of the production sector. In the early 1900s the industry developed very quickly, partly in Central Italy and mostly in the Northeast. The sugar production was North-Central until the thirties, when autarchic politics promoted Central and Southern industrial development. This policy strengthened after the Second World War, thanks to the Cassa del Mezzogiorno's subsidies. Sugar production in Italy fell sharply due to the entry into the European Common Market, and almost all Italian plants were closed, most of them have been demolished to date. Although the sugar industry was mainly centered in the northern regions, there were also factories in the Central and Southern Italy that played an important role in the sugar sector and in the economy of local territories. Today some part of these plants is demolished, as in the rest of Italy, but there are still abandoned factories requiring depth knowledge aimed at interventions to heritage protection. This paper aims to report a geographical and historical survey of the demolished and existing factories, and outline the morphological and construction features of factories representing the three development periods of Central-Southern sugar industry: the early 1900s, the thirties and the fifties, highlighting the evolution of construction for the industry specifically for sugar production.