Antonio Cederna, a cry for nature – time.news

by time news
from GIAN ANTONIO STELLA

The Appian Way, the Sardinian coasts, the Abruzzo Park … the endless battles of the environmentalist who died 25 years ago. He dedicates his life to the defense of the landscape and cultural heritage

The war on nature continues in Italy. The disasters that periodically afflict our country, most recently those of last November, have not yet opened our eyes to the dangers that this war entails. Thus began the great Antonio Cederna, on the shoulder of the Terza Pagina in Corriere della Sera, for whom this year marks the centenary of his birth at the end of October and the twenty-five years of his death next Friday.

It was March 7, 1967, Venice and Florence were still wounded and muddied by the waters of November ’66 and that article, to reread it today, still shivers as if it had been written yesterday morning in the wake of the catastrophic fires of this summer of 2021 that threaten winters with other landslides and other floods. At least two things should have learned, the Italians, wrote the environmentalist strongly wanted in via Solferino by the Tsarina Giulia Maria Crespi, in the first of his four episodes on the assault on Italian parks and woods: The first that floods and overflows have little of fatal and which are largely the result of our own unpredictability, since we have always, systematically, ignored that basic discipline which is called “conservation of nature” and its delicate and multiple balances; the second, a corollary of the first, that the destruction of huge material and cultural assets is the direct consequence of the lightness with which we have upset the natural environment that surrounds us, thanks to sectoral and uncoordinated interventions, which have led us to deforest the mountains causing the fury of the wild waters …

Born in Milan in the stormy 1921, heir to a Valtellinese family of the Lombard enlightened bourgeoisie (copyright Treccani) owner of the homonymous cotton mill, younger brother of the no less famous journalist Camilla Cederna, fled to Switzerland in ’43 to avoid being drafted into Sal’s army, interned in a labor camp near Bern , returned to Milan in the spring of ’45, graduated in archeology in Pavia, moved to Rome to specialize, to the point of becoming so passionate about our historical heritage that he dedicated his entire life to its defense. First collaborating with Elena Croce, then starting to write (he would have done until the close of the magazine) for Mario Pannunzio’s Il Mondo. Where he discovered investigative journalism, gradually widening his interests from archeology to the environment, to the landscape, to the defense of artistic and monumental treasures, to the war against moral, building and urban decay of the Bel Paese starting from the building assault at the queen Viarum, the Appian Way. A war fought for four decades with articles, complaints, books, conferences, bills (such as that of removing the Imperial Forums wanted by the Duce, devastating the heart of Rome) up to at least 140 interventions. Up to earning an amazing nickname: the Appiomaniac.

We ask forgiveness to the memory of the Vandals, for the common opinion that slanders them: Rome and Italy were destroyed by the Romans and the Italians. Thus began the memorable Vandals in the house, the volume that collected for the Laterza publisher a series of extraordinary pieces from those Panunzian years, published in 1956 and revived and relaunched fifty years later by Francesco Erbani, The vandals that interest us are those of our contemporaries, who became legion after the last war, which, out of filthy greed for money, ignorance, vulgarity of soul or simple bestiality, are reducing to dust the testimonies of our past: land owners and merchants, speculators of building areas, construction companies, industrial real estate companies commercial, private clerical and secular businessmen, architects and engineers without professional dignity, plunderers, powerless state and municipal authorities ….

With its sharp profile of a good raptor, as the literary critic Enzo Golino photographed him, Antonio Cederna poked his nose for half a century into a myriad of more or less shady, amazing and unkempt deals of all kinds. Strict: The traffic divider of Italian motorways is the narrowest in the world: just three meters, compared to 4.50 for the Dutch and French motorways (where new regulations provide for 5 meters), 5 meters in Denmark and Switzerland, 5.50 meters Austria and Germany, Great Britain’s 5.60, Finland’s 6.50 …. Very hard: Our best technicians lack the moral sense of revolt against the ugly and the indecent. Dazzling: Italy is a long-term country, with a provisional topography, which is based on an adverb: this forest not yet parceled out, that historic center still well preserved, this stretch of coast not yet cemented. Unwavering on the whimsical upheaval of historic centers: The quality of the projects does not come into question here, much less the supposed defense of the rights of modern art and architecture: since one of the presuppositions of modernity is precisely that of knowing how to adapt to urban planning therefore to renounce, where necessary, to build.

There is no fear that Tonino in the years of the Corriere, before moving to la Repubblica in 1982 (aftermath, alas, of the P2 scandal?), he did not treat by biting those he pointed out as the enemies of the Italian landscape and historical heritage. As the builders of the Hilton hotel in Monte Mario pulled up in contempt of the master plan which in its place provided for a large panoramic square. Or the Roman restaurateurs and shopkeepers in revolt against the driving out of cars from Piazza Navona as if the first vanguards of the Cossack cavalry had appeared on the horizon of the Leonine city. Or Italstrade and the reckless designers who wanted the Alemagna motorway to pass through Cortina d’Ampezzo, bringing noise and fumes and congestion of vehicles where everything should be done to increase the secluded character of the locality. Or the hungry builders of buildings in Gallura: Even along the splendid, fabulous coasts of Sardinia, the sinister tide of concrete and asphalt rises….

One alarm after another, one complaint after another. Like the one (title: Luxury mini-apartments instead of the Torlonia museum) about the emptying of the large building in via della Lungara which contained the largest (private) collection of ancient Roman statues to make a hive of ninety minis built without a license. Or on the chainsaws in the Abruzzo National Park: To those who walk today in the valleys of the Park it seems to be in an immense open-air sawmill …. And so on …

A daily commitment. Coherent. Stubborn. Also pursued as a founding member of Italia nostra (even if he prefers not to appear officially), city councilor in Rome, deputy (independent left) in the Chamber, soul of hundreds of debates, conferences, protests … To the point that when his sons Giuseppe and Giulio found themselves with friends and collaborators to rearrange everything, they realized that they had a mountain of precious material in their hands. With many gold nuggets inside. The result of the work of a cultured and indefatigable man to whom Indro Montanelli also wanted to pay homage, who one day, beating and retorting on topics that he too had dear, wrote: These are things that Antonio Cederna, the most combative and best documented defender of our artistic heritage , he denounced for a while.

August 23, 2021 (change August 23, 2021 | 19:44)

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