Carlo Boccianti’s Churches from the Maremma to the Fucino: not just Houses for the Farmers but Something Strĕnŭus

In the context of post-war reconstruction, the Agrarian Reform that began in 1950 was fundamental to the modernisation and rebirth of Italy. Thanks to the reform bodies, latifundia were expropriated in some regions of the south and in specific areas in others, and the land was distributed among farmers, creating appropriate infrastructures and housing solutions: scattered farms, but also small hamlets, usually centred around a church. An example of this are the settlements designed by Carlo Boccianti (1922-2015) for the Ente per la colonizzazione della Maremma Tosco-Laziale e del Territorio del Fucino in Tuscany, Lazio and Abruzzo. The combination of architecture, which spoke "a very simple language", almost "semi-classical", and sculpture, Boccianti's first love, which was used to "stimulate the sensitivity of the peasants" with something "strĕnŭus" (bold), animated, with more or less happy results, the church projects that the architect carried out in the Agrarian Reform areas. This essay is a sketch of this path of experimentation and research: from the first of Boccianti's churches in the Maremma, Santa Maria Goretti in Rispescia, in the province of Grosseto, where the abstract crucifix by the sculptor Alfio Castelli (1917-1922) around which Boccianti had designed the building's façade was never placed; to the church of the Cuore Immacolato di Maria in Borgo Ottomila, in the centre of Fucino: a building that, probably, housed this and other valuable works by Castelli and which, with the first nucleus of the settlement, was his only intervention in the Abruzzo area involved in the Agrarian Reform; to the church of San Giuseppe Operaio in Pescia Romana, in the province of Viterbo: one of the last that Boccianti designed for the Ente Maremma and a perfect partnership between architecture and art born, in particular, from the collaboration between Boccianti and the sculptor Pietro Cascella (1921-2008). Carlo Boccianti's churches from the Maremma to the Fucino, beyond intellectual purposes or the celebration of architecture, gave voice to the need for spirituality and not just houses of the rural communities settled there, with sensitivity to ecclesiastical needs and awareness of the social role of sacred buildings.