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Earth's fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between \"rural\" and \"urban,\" \"backwardness\" and \"development,\" and \"before\" and \"after,\" shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.

Italian Forgers takes an unorthodox approach to the fascinating topic of art forgery, focusing not on art forgery per se, but on the major forgery scandals that shifted the Italian art market in response to constant, and often intense, demand for Italian objects. By focusing on power dynamics that both precipitated forgery scandals and forged Italian cultural identities, this book connects the debates and discussions about three well-known Italian forgers—Giovanni Bastianini, Icilio Joni, and Alceo Dossena—to anchor and investigate the mechanics of the Italian art market from unification through the fascist era. Carol Helstosky examines foreign accounts of transactions and Italian writings about the art market. The actions and words of Italian dealers illustrate how the Italian art and antiquities market was an undeniably modern industry, on par with tourism in terms of its contribution to the Italian economy and to understandings of Italian identity. These accounts also reveal how dealers, artists, go-betweens, guides, and restorers worked to not only meet the intense demand for Italian products but also to develop highly sophisticated business practices to maintain financial stability and respond to shifts in demand consciously (but not always conscientiously). Italian Forgers weaves a compelling narrative about the history of Italian identity, forgery, and the value of the past. As a result, Helstosky brings historical perspective to the study of art forgery and art fraud. She reveals how historical circumstances and structural imbalances of cultural power shaped the market for art and antiquities and amplified incidents of art deception and forgery scandals.

During the 1990s, Naples' left-wing administration sought to tackle the city's infamous reputation of being poor, crime-ridden, chaotic and dirty by reclaiming the city's cultural and architectural heritage. This book examines the conflicts surrounding the reimaging and reordering of the city's historic centre through detailed case studies of two piazzas and a centro sociale, focusing on a series of issues that include decorum, security, pedestrianization, tourism, immigration and new forms of urban protest. This monograph is the first in-depth study of the complex transformations of one of Europe's most fascinating and misunderstood cities. It represents a new critical approach to the questions of public space, citizenship and urban regeneration as well as a broader methodological critique of how we write about contemporary cities.

The relationship between art and technology in the late nineteenth century was contested but increasingly characterized by a harmonious integration that reflected a progressive and optimistic view of technological innovation. This cover essay examines an advertising poster designed by the German-Italian commercial artist Adolfo Hohenstein for a public exhibition of infants in incubators, which opened in Paris in 1896. Hohenstein's poster for the Maternité Lion , with its distinctive and innovative use of an art nouveau style, captures the widespread enthusiasm for the new technologies and industries that characterized the art nouveau movement. The aesthetics of art nouveau expressed a broader cultural optimism about modernity and progress around the turn of the twentieth century. Hohenstein's poster exemplifies this by providing an aestheticized and exhibitory framework for introducing the incubator as a new technology, specifically to appeal to women.

Packed in its dense, historic city centers, Italy holds some of the most prized architecture and art in the world, with which planners and politicians have had to negotiate as they struggle to cope with massive migration from the countryside to the city. Early modern architecture coincided with a sustained drive to transform a country that was still primarily rural into a modern industrial state, and throughout the twentieth century, architects in Italy have attempted to define the role of architecture within a capitalist economy and under diverse political systems. In Italy: Modern Architectures in History, Diane Yvonne Ghirardo addresses these and other issues in her analysis of the last century of Italy's building practices. Specifically, she examines the post-unification efforts to identify a distinctly Italian architectural language, as well as the transformation of the urban environment in Italian cities undergoing industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She challenges received interpretations of modern architecture and also looks at the subject of illegal building and current responses to ecological challenges. In order to illuminate the full scope of the building industry in Italy, her examples are drawn not only from the work of widely published architects in the largest cities but from throughout the peninsula, including small towns and rural areas. Insightful reading for those interested in Italian culture, this book offers a new way of understanding the architectural history of modern Italy.

At the turn of the 20th century, Christian and Catholic churches in Western nations established numerous mission hospitals in non-European regions. In China, mission hospitals represent a significant category of modern architectural heritage, symbolising advancements in healthcare and medical education while also serving as historical artifacts of early cultural interactions between China and the West. With ongoing developments in medical technology, these mission hospital structures no longer meet contemporary healthcare demands; many have been repurposed or temporarily abandoned. Preserving and effectively repurposing mission hospital heritage has thus emerged as a critical issue. In the present study, the Shantung Christian University Union Medical College was examined as a case study in addressing this challenge. The site retains the original Outpatient Building, Inpatient Building, Medical Teaching Building, and other architectural heritage and has preserved the original mixed Chinese and Western architectural styles. A combination of historical research, field investigation, and historic layering was adopted in the present study, drawing primarily on data from historical maps, satellite images from different periods, aerial photography from drones, architectural drawings, and other relevant historical data. Through case studies, methods for characterising and identifying the landscape and architectural heritage of mission hospitals were explored. Principles for the preservation and regeneration of the heritage of church hospitals were also proposed, with a view to providing a reference for the study and preservation of this type of heritage.

This paper builds on a body of multi-disciplinary literature to analyze and compare the emergence of the prêt-à-porter industry in France and the ready-to-wear industry in Italy from their founding to their growth stages in the mid-twentieth century. The comparison demonstrates the significant impact that the French Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, des Confectionneurs et des Tailleurs pour Dame, and the National Chamber of Italian Fashion had on the trajectories of the fashion industry for each country. The article focuses on foundational entrepreneurs within the industry such as Giovanni Battista Giorgini, Jean Patou, Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and others. It analyzes how these chambers supported the emergence of differentiated firms within the fashion industry, and how the industry responded to the business conditions in the international economy of the post-World War II period through the global recession of the 1970s.

This Gulf of Manfredonia has, for millennia, been the primary water feature of the coastal wetland of Northern Apulia, Italy, although modern reclamation works make writing its long-term history challenging. Our recent paleoenvironmental research has reconstructed the evolution of the southern half of this lagoon since the Neolithic period. Here, we write a history of water management and environmental change in this landscape from the perspective of two key urban sites: pre-Roman Salpia vetus and Roman Salapia. The Roman architectural historian Vitruvius recounts the abandonment of Salpia vetus and the refoundation of Salapia. We employ his narrative as a frame for a more complex environmental history, starting from a historiography of this landscape’s study and a summary of our interdisciplinary research agenda, which unifies environmental, topographical, remote sensing, and archaeological approaches. Resilience in this changeable wetland environment was only possible through an integrated and intentional management of water among rivers, the lagoon, and the Adriatic Sea. While Salpia vetus exploited this wetland and thrived for centuries, the settlement eventually collapsed due to human and environmentally impelled factors. Roman Salapia subsequently emerged with a different approach, new infrastructure, and a new location. This blueprint would sustain urban life in this wetland for six centuries and lay the groundwork for the Medieval town.

Eighteenth-century Rome offers a privileged view of art market activities, given the continuity of remarkable investments by the local ruling class, combined with the decisive impact of external agents, largely linked to the Grand Tour. This book, the result of collaboration between international specialists, brings back into the spotlight protagonists, facts and dynamics that have remained unexplored for many years.

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including war diaries, memoirs, paintings, films, and government archives,Roads and Ruinsis a richly textured study that offers an original perspective on a well known story.