Blockhouses and Batteries

Blockhouses and Batteries are perfect examples of the military architecture that has characterized this territory for over two centuries. The island of La Maddalena’s strategic position in the Mediterranean has given it an ever-increasing military interest since the second half of the 1700s. A perfect place to hold off smugglers, the Barbareschi and the attempt of French revenge that was always at the door. The defenses were mainly positioned on the island of La Maddalena and the island of Santo Stefano (Guardia Vecchia¹, Balbiano², Tegge³, Carlo Felice⁴, Casemattata tower and San Giorgio fort⁵). The increasingly modern and sophisticated armaments gradually made these structures obsolescent.

Towards the end of the 1800s, however, La Maddalena’s location was once again seen as strategic, not only to defend ourselves against the French invasions but from all over the Western Mediterranean. Batteries with greater firepower were then made along the coast (Opera Nido d’Aquila⁶, Opera Punta Tegge³, Punta Sardegna, Opera Punta Rossa⁷ and Opera Capo Tre Monti) but also on the surrounding hills (Opera Guardia Vecchia¹, Opera Colmi⁸, Opera Trinita⁹ and Opera Punta Villa ¹⁰). The same fate occurred to the island of Caprera: Opera Arbuticci¹¹ and Poggio Rasu¹² were built on the lands that were taken away from General Garibaldi‘s successors.





The technological progress in the military field made these works, once fundamental and functional, extremely fragile and vulnerable to air attacks. It became necessary to resort to a greater attention to mimicry. For this reason, batteries were made with concrete and granite boulders, in order to recreate, with the utmost fidelity, Sardinia’s rocky and tormented landscape. These works can still be observed on the island of Spargi (Zanotto¹³, Pietrajaccio¹⁴ and Cala Corsara ¹⁵), the island of Caprera (Candeo¹⁶, Mass of the Deer, Poggio Baccà¹⁷, Punta Coda and Isola del Porco), the island of Santo Stefano (Punta dello Zucchero) and of course the island of La Maddalena (Spalmatore¹⁸, Guardia del Turco¹⁹, Carlotto⁸ and Puntiglione).

These works are particularly interesting as they show how the logic of defense determined the place’s morphology and induced military engineers to omit all the logics hitherto used to exploit the environmental elements in their favor.

 Sources and Insights
www.lamaddalenapark.it