The places of historical events: I Borghi del Duce

Places are entered in the IWB register of the Sicily Region (Places of historical events) - Sector "Places of historical events of the early twentieth century"

1940 - The villages of the Duce: 

Form:

The cities of foundation in the Fascist period, understood as autonomous urban centers, represented the other aspect of planning the territory together with the complex rural systems envisaged in the extensive and significant work of integral reclamation and colonization carried out by the regime over the course of the twenty years.

This extensive urban development related to the creation of new settlements has recently been the subject of studies, rediscoveries and publications.

The nuclei, both for their modest size and for their design characteristics, were not comparable to a real urban center. The most frequent type of settlement corresponded, in fact, to a service center located within a scattered settlement area, where the rural houses are located directly on the agricultural plot assigned to the farmhouse.

The assembly center was not residential, but included public buildings (church, beam house, sometimes town hall, carabinieri or militia barracks, post office and school) and services (shop, barber shop, inn) organized around a square or to a road axis. In some cases, the settlement was even poorer, as in some Sicilian examples, with the rural school, the headquarters of the agricultural consortium and little more.

The areas necessary to carry out the interventions were almost always recovered by drawing on uncultivated state-owned land, areas subject to civic uses, swampy areas acquired at low cost and which were entrusted to the body in charge of reclamation, almost always the ONC (Opera Nazionale Combattenti) , which provided for the planning, furnishing and assignment of the various plots to families of sharecroppers who would pay off the initial investments over time and also redeem the property.

There were numerous cases in which even private individuals (speculative anonymous companies, pious works, families of the Roman nobility) participated, more or less voluntarily, in the reclamation initiatives by appoderating land to be exploited and entrusted to sharecroppers and taking advantage of subsidized loans for the necessary works.

There were few cases of expropriation due to non-compliance of the owners, who were required to carry out the appoderation works, especially in Puglia and Sicily, despite the fact that the legislation had been oriented in this sense both before and during Fascism. The main promoter of this legislation and in general of the integral reclamation processes was Arrigo Serpieri who, however, in 1935 was exonerated precisely because of his intransigence towards non-expropriations.

The architecture of the founding settlements reflects the complexity of the Italian architectural panorama of the thirties, in which the demands of the most rigorous European rationalism coexisted, with the so-called "twentieth century" style that pursued a reinterpretation of tradition, to keep from the more academic positions. Among these positions there was a heated controversy that did not prevent compromises and hybridizations on the road to search for an “Italian” rationalism carried out, for example by Libera, and on the attention to spontaneous “Mediterranean” architecture.

We can see the results of this controversial clash, for example, in the construction of the Agro Pontino centers. In most cases, however, the search to reconcile modernity and tradition prevails, with forms that so much recall metaphysical painting.

In Sicily, the first planning interventions for new settlements date back to the 20s and 30s as part of the reclamation campaigns of uncultivated and unhealthy areas that affected the entire nation especially after law no. 3134 of 1928 "Provisions for complete reclamation", which strengthened previous legislative provisions. About ten new villages welcomed the workers employed in the reclamation works and were later destined to become new residential or agricultural settlements (iron, 1927), although the conversion process was not always carried out (Borgo Recalmigi, now abandoned, near Castronovo di Sicilia). The best known of such centers is Pergusa (1935), built for the reclamation of the wetlands around Pergusa lake. Other reclamation sites were the Lentini lake (Bardara Village) and the wetlands around Syracuse.

Two interesting interventions of the same period were carried out by private individuals as part of the economic incentives offered for the sharecropping of large estates: Santa Rita village e Libertine built between 1922 and 1936 in the countryside of Ramacca.

Around 1939 the policy of support for sharecropping and attention to the rural question and the overall reorganization of Sicilian agriculture accelerated, which the regime propaganda called "assault on the large estates" and which led to the law 2/1/1940 which strengthened previous provisions of land reform, at the birth of the ECLS, (Colonization body of the Sicilian latifundium) and the foundation of some villages, some very small, destined to become service centers of the future appoder of the surrounding uncultivated areas, according to a usual model.

Thus eight villages were born, each of them able to accommodate about 1 people, comprising a series of building and urban structures: the church, the rectory, the beam house, the barracks, the sanatorium, rooms for craftsmen, the trattoria , the pharmacy, the office of the Colonization Authority and a public fountain, as well as several smaller "suburbs", and were designed by young designers with fully functionalist intentions. In 500 it was designed by Louis Epiphanius Borgo Amerigo Fazio in the Trapani area

Made around 1940 they were Borgo Lupo (Mineo), Borgo Giuliano (San Teodoro), Borgo Portella della Croce (Between Prizzi and Vicari), Borgo Petilia (Caltanissetta), Borgo Giacomo Schiro (Monreale), Borgo Vicaretto (Castellana Sicula), Borgo Baccarato (Aidone), Borgo Antonio Cascino (Enna), Borgo Domenico Borzellino (Monreale), Borgo Antonio Bonsignore (Ribera). The operation failed for many reasons, in addition of course to the outbreak of the war: the lack of infrastructures, the poor willingness of farmers to leave the inhabited centers of origin, the lack of land to appoder, not having proceeded to any expropriation. In fact, the only land expropriated was English property, in the Nelson duchy between Maniace and Bronte where Borgo Caracciolo, now abandoned, was founded. Some villages were never used and currently are practically all in a state of neglect and some, even valuable as architecture, are now ruins (Borgo Lupo, Borgo Schirò). Other villages were built by other local bodies and entities. It was a separate case Mussolinia of Sicily, today Santo Pietro, part of the municipality of Caltagirone, a widely publicized project (Mussolini laid the first stone) and never completed following grotesque events that have raised the interest of narrators such as Sciascia and Camilleri.

List of settlements in Sicily:

• Borgo Callea later known as Borgo Tumarrano, Borgo Pasquale - Fraz. Di Cammarata
• Borgo La Loggia, Villaggio Mosè - Hamlets of Agrigento
• Borgo Burrainiti - Province of Agrigento
• Villanova Village - Fraz. Of Villarosain the province of Enna
• Borgo Guttadauro (abandoned), Borgo Gurgazzi - Butera
• Borgo Manfria- Gela
• Santa Barbara village- Province of Caltanissetta
• Libertinia - Ramacca
• Borgo Ventimiglia - Caltagirone
• Borgo Ingrao, Borgo Ciclino - Province of Messina
• Borgo Manganaro - Vicari
• Grottamurata Village, Borgo Filaga, Fellamonics, Borgo Riena (abandoned), Borgo Margana - Province of Palermo
• Resort Nice flash- Palermo
• Borgo Capparini - Monreale
• Borgo Castagnola, Borgo Piano Cavaliere, Borgo Pizzillo, Borgo Roccella - Contessa Entellina
• Borgo Angelo Rizza (now abandoned) - Carlisle
• Borgo Regalmici - Castronovo di Sicilia
• Borgo Fiumefreddo - SIRACUSA
• Borgo Binuara - Trapani
• Borgo Livio Bassi - C.da Ummari, Trapani
• Borgo Amerigo Fazio - Trapani
• Borgo Badia- Buseto Palizzolo
• Borgo Bruca - Buseto Palizzolo
• Borgo Runza - Mazara del Vallo
• Borgo Recalmigi - Castronovo di Sicilia
• Borgo Sferro- Paternò
• Pergusa village- Enna
• Saint Peter- Caltagirone
• Borgo Lupo- Mineo
• Borgo Giuliano - San Teodoro
• Borgo Portella della Croce (Between Prizzi and Vicari)
• Borgo Petilia- Caltanissetta
• Borgo Giacomo Schiro(Monreale, near Corleone; uninhabited)
• Borgo Vicaretto - Castellana Sicula
• Borgo Baccarato- Aidone
• Borgo Antonio Cascino - Enna
• Borgo Domenico Borzellino - Monreale
• Borgo Antonio Bonsignore- Ribera