Treviso Underground on the attack: a long crack has opened. “It is the demonstration that the monumental degree is vital”
TREVISO. «In the bastion of the ex Camuzzi walls there are subsidence and collapses in progress». The alarm is sounded by Treviso Underground, the association that together with Italia Nostra, Fai, Auser, Rotary, Lions and Amici dei Musei is promoting a massive campaign to protect the city walls.
The two dangers
Underground parking at the former skating rink and buildings at the former Camuzzi are the most imminent threats, according to the associations. And this last intervention, albeit concentrated only on a small part of the bastion bordered by Via Roma, is showing the first consequences of the strength of the bulldozers on such a delicate structure.
In fact, a subsidence occurred on the bastion, “Right under the point where work is being done with a construction site,” says Simone Piaser, from Treviso S topic. The crack is clearly visible from the pavement on the opposite side of the canal: an opening of a few centimeters, with the bricks detached and fallen. “We’ve been saying this for some time: that bastion has major static problems. It’s all written in a dossier that we have handed over to the Municipality for years ».
What is happening? A few weeks ago the construction site for the restoration of the old house of the keeper of the gasometer was started, by Alcide Setten, a construction site that will become a villa, perhaps for Setten himself. For Treviso Underground, the consequentiality of the events – start of the works and new collapse – is more than suspect. The structure of the bastion does not help stability: an internal wall is added to the external wall resting on the brick one, with numerous gaps between one and the other. The thrust of the embankment can therefore lead to bulging and collapses.
“The partial reclamation carried out in the 1990s was limited solely to emptying the contents of the old tub tunnels, it has in no way remedied the situation of the surrounding land, which is currently soaked in strongly smelly blackish material. The existence, in the subsoil, of further reservoirs-cavities abandoned during the activity of the city gasometer and not yet reclaimed ”, adds Piaser. For Treviso Underground there is therefore only one road: do not authorize interventions on the Bastion, excavate the embankment bringing the original structure back to light, and carry out an accurate restoration. “A similar intervention was carried out in Padua in the Bastione Santa Croce”, concludes the president of Treviso Underground Simone Piaser.
Poor maintenance
Ma for cultural associations, what is happening to the former Camuzzi is emblematic of the scarce protection that is dedicated to the city walls. This is why they joined in the request sent days ago to the Superintendency and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage to ask for a direct, “monumental” bond on the bastion system, or the same degree of protection that currently only affects the ancient entrance doors to the walls.
In fact today the walls are protected only by an indirect constraint, which protects only the aesthetics but not the structure. A condition that the city cultural associations want to remedy instead of those who could and should do it: the owner of the walls, namely Ca ‘Sugana: “If the walls had the same constraint as the doors, interventions such as that of the underground parking would not have been authorized at the former skating rink ”, they explained. Nor that wild building that many decades ago saw them disappear one step at a time in different parts of the city, such as in via dei Mille or in via Oriani, hidden behind the former headquarters of Enel. –