The defortification of Italian cities: bibliographic overviews

Little has been written on the close relationship between defortification of Italian cities, and urban planning, social and economic aspects, between the 19th and early 20th century. One of the first problems any researcher on the subject may encounter will be the fragmented nature of the material. In order to make the proposed material more readable, the paper presents three bibliographic overviews. The first overview deals with legal, administrative and financial aspects of defortification. It includes publications that focus on legal procedures of demilitarization of city walls, no longer having strategic purposes and transferred to Town Hall ownership. Special attention is given to essays concerning financial and administrative aspects, such as property speculation in areas freed up by demolition of city walls, and the enlargement of tax boundaries of some towns. In the second overview, bibliographic references deal with the connection between demolition of city walls and urban transformations, as in some cases of the building of railway yards, road system improvement and, generally, city plan implementations. References also concern the subject of city walls conversions into boulevards and urban ring roads. The last overview runs through a series of publications focused on the impact of some issues on the process of city walls demolition, such as demographic increase, unemployment crisis, industrial development, public sanitation and conservative cultures.

Keywords: Bibliography Overviews Defortification City walls

Nino Sulfaro, La dismissione delle fortificazioni urbane in Italia: percorsi bibliografici in "STORIA URBANA " 136/2012, pp 225-240, DOI: 10.3280/SU2012-136008