Progettare la difesa della città. La lenta e progressiva disintegrazione dell'occupazione spagnola

1713: the Utrecht Treaty guarantees to Vittorio Amedeo II, duke of Savoy, Sicily and the crown; in the north of the peninsula Alessandria and the Lomellina country are subtracted to the State of Milan, for two centuries into the Spanish orbit. It starts, in this way, a slow progressive disintegration of the Spanish occupation in Italy. The Piedmont military engineers judge obsolete, in several cases, the defensive systems of the annexed “spanish” cities and they believe to be adjusted quickly. Hence, a historical short-circuit requires to defend territories that, until a few years before, were feared enemies. The many maps of the “italian” cities between the seventeenth and eighteenth century are kept in the most important Italian and foreign archives (Milano, Roma, national and military archives in Paris, Madrid, Simancas, and the Krigsarkivet of Stockholm): the documents show a urban history made of visits by many military engineers, reliefs, projects, often never realized, in the common conviction that we should curb attacks in a historical moment in which the alliances are easily damaged and unstable.