La fortificazione permanente del confine orientale. Complesso San Quirino. The permanent fortification of the eastern border. San Quirino complex

In Italy the military occupies for 783 km2 of land. The richest and most advanced regions are Sardinia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia: ‘(...) in Friuli Venezia Giulia there are 102 km2 bound to military activities; this amount is equal to more than two and half times Pordenone’s city area’ (www.primulecaserme.it; accessed May 6, 2017). Thanks to an extended research online, we learned the great impact on the territory of the structures aimed at its defence. We also acknowledged the lack of information about their actual size. For this reason I wanted to investigate their characteristics and consistency. The permanent fortiication network along the eastern border was covered up by military secret until the 1990s and then only at the end of the Cold War, and the fall of Berlin Wall, was dismantled, partly abandoned and demolished. What are its characteristics? The research analysed the region, considering the historical events that led to the change of location and morphology of the borders. In this area the military strategy adopted in the First World War was the so called ‘war of position’, which was then followed by the ‘war of movement’ and the ‘total war’ in the Second World War. In the Cold War the fortiication network was adjusted to the armour and armaments, which implied the use of logistic nuclear weapons. The analysis highlighted the presence of a widespread defence system, based on larger structures, such as barracks, training centres and shooting or iring ranges and small underground stations, consisting of individual ‘tools’, containing a cannon and a machine gun, coordinated by the observation post and command. The irst ones amount to a few hundred, the second ones reach a thousand. These buildings and military emplacements were still operative in the 1980s and therefore were carefully maintained, camoulaged and, consequently, secret. It is on this latter aspect that we should lift the veil of oblivion that has prevented our knowledge. Research on the permanent fortiication of the eastern border is underway. Partial results have provided topics for numerous graduate theses, didactic communications and conferences. One of these is the case study I propose, the permanent fortiication of the Natisone Valley (from the Caporetto Passage to Cividale del Friuli), which is fundamental to understand the complexity of the entire defensive system along the eastern border. In fact, the aim of this study is to have a comprehensive picture of the eastern border defensive system that affected our territory for a period of ifty years, transforming it with the construction and the later dismantling of the system.