AN EVEN GREATER ACHIEVEMENT?
date: 11 March 2010 at 09:37:00 - 0 comments
On 25 October 2009, we published an article entitled “OUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT?” on this blog. We were writing about our fight against a massive modern office block in the medieval part of the town in Umbria in which we live.
Yesterday, the high court in Spoleto provided an answer to the question with which we ended that article: “So, what happens next?”
We suggested a possible answer. “Well, they could knock it down…”
To recap, the local city council wanted to build a car-park in the historical centre of the town. Unable to purchase the land, they arranged a swap. In exchange for the land, they gave building permission to the person who owned the other half of the plot. The result was an architectural horror – six soaring storeys of cheap concrete blocking out a magnificent view of medieval towers and Renaissance palaces.
Well, yesterday the presiding judge, Alberto Avenoso, pronounced sentence: he ordered 2 architects, 2 council technicians, and the 2 directors of the building project to be jailed for 4 months each (sentence suspended) and to pay a fine of €25,000 each for the damage done to the environment. We hope that this will be a warning to all like-minded speculators in the future. You cannot destroy the past (which belongs to everyone) to the financial advantage of a few.
More important still, Judge Avenoso declared that the building should be partially demolished.
He decreed that the volume of the construction was based on incorrect building quotients, and that it is three-fifths bigger than it ought to have been. If the sentence become definitive – there is still a long way to go, there will be an appeal, and the Court of Cassation will have to determine that the judge’s findings are correct – approximately two thirds of the building, that is, at least three floors, will be demolished.
For the moment, it is a technical victory for people like ourselves, people who signed petitions, organised a month-long sit-in, and a non-violent protest march (the local police estimated that about 500 people were present). Now, we are waiting for the bulldozers to move in.
That day – and not one day before – the champagne corks will pop.
Photo: the magnificent march of 9th June, 2007, when 500 people hit the streets to defend the city that they love.
