The rural Italian Villages of the 1950s: Places to know and relive

After World War II the Agrarian Reform established a new land system in Italy, abolishing large-scale organization and encouraging farmers to repopulate the countryside. In Southern Italy, in particular, many rural villages were designed by some important architects such as Ludovico Quaroni or Plinio Marconi. In the same years, Franco’s Regime encouraged the construction of about 300 “pueblos de Colonización”, sometimes inspired by the Italian fascist towns of Agro Pontino. The Spanish settlements had a social and economic character and represented significant examples of a return to the countryside as well as the rural Italian villages built in the 1950s. Farmers were housed close to their estates and could take advantage of a range of specially designed public, social and religious services. Nowadays, these Italian and Spanish rural settlements have sometimes lost their identity through radical interventions of building renovations or long periods of abandonment. Therefore, they deserve to be known for new reuses, now more than ever, given the problems of living in densely populated cities.