Preparations for the Great War Great War Preparation Damage Reconstruction

The essay introduces the contents of the volume of «Storia urbana» dealing with preparations for the Great War. It is the first step of a wider editorial project dedicated to the conflict. As the bibliographic overview in the final part of the book demonstrates, a study on the Great War includes many topics. For this reason, it seems correct to organize the project into three monographic issues to be published in the four-year period of the Centenary of the conflict (2015-2018). The steps of this articulated programme follow the sequence of events of the war: preparations for the war, which analyses the period preceding the participation of Italy to the conflict (May 1915); the damage inflicted to urban areas and territory; the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructures, but also the creation of memory which was the frame of the processes of re-birth in Italy and in all the other countries involved in the war. In particular, this volume, dedicated to preparations for the war, gathers essays dealing with the impressive development of road systems in the areas involved in the conflict, the improvement of military defensive systems (particularly in Trentino) behind and on the front line, also focusing on the evolution of trenches which, in many cases, transformed the landscape along the front line. Furthermore, this issue deals with urban and social transformations in the «war areas» (describing, in particular, the case of the Brescian Basso Garda) and the first measures for the protection of historic buildings and works of arts threatened by the war

Keywords: Guerra Preparazione Danni Ricostruzione

Gian Paolo Treccani, La preparazione alla grande guerra in "STORIA URBANA " 149/2015, pp 5-8, DOI: 10.3280/SU2015-149001