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To someone in a country with a tiny handful of its oldest buildings as much as 200 years old (NZ), the idea of drowning a bell tower built in the 1300s seems to
by mkl 5y ago
To someone in a country with a tiny handful of its oldest buildings as much as 200 years old (NZ), the idea of drowning a bell tower built in the 1300s seems totally insane. I guess Italy has a lot of old buildings, and Mussolini & co. didn't care about these ones.
New Zealand has rebuilt (parts of) at least one town higher up to make a hydro lake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell,_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell,_New_Zealand), but didn't drown anything like as old or significant.
- tlamponi 5y ago> I guess Italy has a lot of old buildings, and Mussolini & co. didn't care about these ones. Yes and no, while Italy has lots of old buildings, that wasn't the reason here to overlook destroying those. Rather, this was the newly annexed province with a population speaking natively German (or better a German dialect related to the Bavarian one). Mussolini tried hard to subdue the population, forbidding also to teach German in schools for a time, which resulted in the "Katakombenschulen", schools in the underground which taught childern in German secretly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakombenschule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakombenschule So where to carry out destructive projects to build power plants and the-like than in the freshly annexed area? Mussolini moved lots of Italians from the south to that area to enforce Italianisation, those people often were forced to do so and coming from a totally different climate they struggled with the harsh winters in the mid of the Alps. Quite the messed up period which lasted, at least to some degree, even after Mussolini's death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization_of_South_Tyrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization_of_South_Tyrol
- jaclaz 5y agoWell, without any kind of language or racial conflict, we (in Italy) do have a few such villages (or anyway buildings/farms/etc.) that were submerged when building new basins/artificial lakes (for hydro power plants or for regulating rivers, etc.). One example in Tuscany: https://www.vaglipark.it/territorio/il-lago-e-il-paese-fantasma/ https://www.vaglipark.it/territorio/il-lago-e-il-paese-fanta... The basin was due to be emptied for the first time in 2021 (after last time in 1994) but will probably be postponed to 2022. If you think about it, it is pretty much "normal", ancient villages were either built on top of hills (that guaranteed better defense) or in the middle of valleys crossed by a river (that guaranteed water in abundance). You build dams to use the valley as basin, so if there is a village/bulding in it it all depends on the current (at the time of the project) architectural/landscape/historical sensibility of the society to either abandon the project, move/relocate the buildings ( like to make a famous reference Abu Simbel in Egypt) or submerse everything. As another (small) example in Tuscany, when the lake of Bilancino was built in the 1980's, everything in the valley was submersed (to be fair very few buildings of dubious historical value existed in the area) but a monumental gate was moved on another area, at a higher level: https://mapio.net/pic/p-29646863/ https://mapio.net/pic/p-29646863/
- frostburg 5y agoI live in house that was built in the 13th century (also in Tuscany), which isn't typical, but as far as I know the building isn't of any historical significance whatsoever. I'm no hurry to have it submerged, but I can see how various past administrations didn't think much of doing so. For a more striking example, after the second world war there was an effort to empty out the inhabitants living in precarious conditions in prehistoric dwellings in Matera (and those are almost ten thousand years old).
- jaclaz 5y agoThe submersion of (historical) buildings/villages is all about "how much they are valued?/how much does it cost to save them?" and "are we ready to spend that klnd of money?". The latter example is a different thing, it is "health" related, just like the norms amd Laws about houses, specifying the the minimal requirements to be able to call a house "habitable", or suitable for humans to live in, that evolved during the years and nowadays are in Italy among - believe - the strictest ones, see this old post of mine that lists some of the base requirements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21178607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21178607 at least compared to some other EU countries.
- frostburg 5y agoMatera was an example of extraordinarily old dwellings even for Italy, not of the decision making process (sorry, that was a bit unclear). The decision was in part health-and-safety related and in part a political issue of "people technically living in caverns makes us look bad" - the idea of fixing the living conditions in the Sassi instead of moving people in newly built houses was far from the sensibilities of the time.
- ehnto 5y agoI know just how you feel, being from Australia. I'm often a little envious of other countries having such rich and meaningful heritage surrounding them, it can be harder to feel grounded in a country so young.
- newsclues 5y agoUntil that heritage slows or prevents development and it becomes costly!
- pasabagi 5y agoDoesn't Australia have just as long a history as anywhere else though? It seems to me people just aren't all that interested in pre-settlement history. The same goes for a lot of settler-colonial nations.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoI don’t know if things are better now, but in the early 2000s, the Australian education system barely touched on indigenous history. It was mentioned mostly in the context of the colonial settlers, almost like indigenous people came into being only to play a role in Australia’s colonial history.
- pasabagi 5y agoI can see the point though: it's hard to do history about oral traditions, doubly so for oral traditions where most of the people in the tradition have been displaced or killed. Also, politicians tend to see history as a sort of 'national identity' education, and I don't think the dominant political trends in Australia are ready to face this part of the Australian national story, which is cowardly, but it's a very common form of cowardice.
- ehnto 5y agoSpot on, and something that can go unsaid is that even unity is a bitter pill to swallow for the indigenous. There is no saving face for politicians so it remains the elephant in the room. I will say I am glad we are trying though. There is a lot being done, and inclusion of the indigenous history in our cities is a great step. Many things here have been renamed with their old indigenous names, which really drives home the point that it wasn't just barren land prior to settlement.
- garbagetime 5y agoJust to clarify, since your comment is maybe a bit ambiguous, New Zealand did have buildings in the 1300s (it's just that they weren't built to last, and haven't survived).
- eliben 5y ago1300 CE seems insane? The Middle East is like hold my hummus (https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeological-dig-uncovers-10000-year-old-building/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeological-dig-uncovers-10... etc.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- didntknowya 5y agowe do have the Horahora station which was submerged in Lake Karapiro when the new dam was built- but that's one architecture that will likely not be missed.