Regenerating the Hidden Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Campo Trincerato in Rome

The development of contemporary cities is characterized by increas-ing heterogeneity and dispersion of settlements, activities and services, and public spaces. Urban regeneration can play a key role in the revitalization of marginal or declining urban areas, enhancing the cultural patrimony as a structural compo-nent and promoting identity, social inclusion and the local economy. A particular case in point is the nineteenth-and twentieth-century military fortifications of Rome’s Campo Trincerato, a system of fifteen forts and three batteries of great historical and documentary value. The forts, today mostly in the process of being decommissioned, can represent, if viewed from a network perspective, an oppor-tunity to configure an offer of spaces for culture capable of activating a process of regeneration of physical and immaterial relations, promoting shared paths of valorization and re-functionalization. Reasoning about the regeneration of this system means not only refunctionalizing structures, but also recomposing con-textual, environmental, urban, social, and cultural relationships to restore urban quality and redefine the landscape of the contemporary city’s suburbs.