Borghi rurali e case coloniche nel paesaggio della pianura pontina. Conoscenza per la conservazione

Around the 1930s, the Agro Pontino was subjected to a radical process of transformation which affected that portion of unhealthy territory crossed by the Via Appia Antica. Already during the 16th century, both Pope Leo X and Pope Sixtus V attempted an organic approach to the settlement of the marshy lands of the Pontine countryside (Berti 1884, p. 101-113; Almagià 1935); however, it is the 18th-19th century interventions that have the most significant impact on the area, particularly the operation of ‘desiccation.’ of the marshes ordered by Pius VI based on a project by the engineer Gaetano Rappini that, in 1777, allowed for the concrete reduction of the marshes, the discovery of the Appia Antica and its landscapes praised by the travellers of the Grand Tour. When fascism began to appear on the Italian political scene after the First World War, the reclamation works of the Pontine territory were seen not only as a tool for sanitising the environment but also as a social and political lever since the recovered lands could be offered to former combatants. It is in this era that reclamation becomes “integral” (Serpieri 1930, p. 3), capable, that is, of different goals ranging from hydraulic arrangement to environmental restoration, up to agricultural exploitation and repopulation of the area; objectives, the last two, managed by the Opera Nazionale Combattenti (Tassinari, 1939).In the Agro Pontino modelling plan, the hierarchical organisation of space is managed through a complex branched territorial structure within which the infrastructural network of canals and roads constitutes the supporting system around which the different settlement realities gather so that the new families of settlers can settle within a complex residential structure made up of 5 new inhabited centres, rural villages and farmhouses that have arisen in approximately 3,000 agricultural companies. Between 1932 and 1939, the 2953 farmhouses in the Agro Pontino were built in twenty different types of construction. They are all indistinctly single-family dwellings and used to serve a single farm, i.e. responding to the motto: “To every farm it's family; to every family it's home”. The buildings intended to house the settler, and his family are organised rationally to simultaneously support their domestic life and work activities. In most cases, the constructions are two-storey buildings of different sizes. The designers of the Opera Nazionale Combattenti tried to interpret the idea of fascist ruralism, which aimed to combine the development of agricultural and livestock productivity with the maintenance of the traditional social fabric, composing a building in which family life was inextricably linked to working activity. This complex system is being lost in the urban expansion, which has led to the saturation of rural villages and a progressive settlement in the countryside. The ongoing cataloguing project aims to determine how many original buildings are still standing and their respective conservation conditions. It is also necessary to begin to reflect on their protection and preservation, even if this cultural heritage, the result of an authoritarian regime, is “difficult” to restore as it brings numerous ideological problems.