Sicily’s incredible airship hangar: it survived the wars and now lies abandoned

There is a large cathedral overlooking the sea in the countryside of Augusta, in the province of Syracuse, on Sicily’s east coast. It is surrounded by acres of uncultivated land: brambles, wild plants, a few palm trees and a grove of eucalyptus trees, which today must be crossed to reach it. Its height far exceeds that of nearby trees and buildings. It does not blend in, but soars upward in a vertical thrust supported by fifteen concrete frames. It was explored for Domus by photographer Marco Menghi, who described it as “a unique place in the world.”

The Augusta hangar is more than 100 years old. It was built from 1917 at the behest of the Regia Marina, the navy of the Kingdom of Italy, as a base for airships tasked during World War I with defending the area from German U-boats. In fact, construction was completed only after the conflict ended, in 1920, but the hangar continued to house airships used for training and reconnaissance. In 1925, it changed function, becoming a seaplane terminal under the control of the Regia Aeronautica. Various military uses followed, until it was finally decommissioned in 1958.

Today, in and around the building, nothing moves but lizards and dust, illuminated by sunlight filtering through the side openings and the large door, which is almost completely closed. No one makes a sound, yet all it takes is a footstep or the beating of a bird's wings for sound to echo through the huge, empty space. The building is inactive and uninhabitable, but residents can see in that infinite space a possible future, imagining an open and accessible place, and not yet another missed opportunity to rewrite the fate of abandoned or unfinished architecture, an unfortunately recurring plot in the dynamics of the island. 

Few people can fully grasp what a volume of 12,000 cubic metres represents: the hangar can accommodate an airship of that enormous size. Building a structure of this magnitude is a challenge even today, and it was the greatest in the career of Antonio Garboli, an engineer who graduated from the Milan Polytechnic in 1906 and was also a leading builder in Littoria, today's Latina. Garboli worked quite a bit for Mussolini.

Worldwide, the building is the only one of its kind constructed entirely in reinforced concrete, as well as an invaluable testament to the wartime period and a true relic of industrial archaeology. The structure is astonishing, both for its scale—105.5 metres by 45.5 metres and 37 metres high—and for its engineering solutions. Despite decades of abandonment, neither the long walls nor the vast barrel vault were damaged by the earthquake that struck the area in 1990. So remarkable was its resilience that a team of experts from the architecture and engineering faculties of Nagoya University in Japan travelled to Augusta to study its construction techniques.

The reduced thickness of the concrete roof—just ten centimetres—would have allowed it to be quickly rebuilt in the event of explosions, while the openings left in the structure were designed to let hydrogen disperse in case of accidents. A gigantic metal door, now entirely covered in rust, was motor-driven and opened and closed by folding in on itself like a bellows. Above it, a gently curved form remains intact, resolving the façade by tying into the structural frame that anchors the building to the ground. There is, indeed, a certain Greekness to the hangar’s form: in this “tympanum,” in its repeated elements and strict symmetry, the structure echoes the archetype of the classical temple.

Born for wartime needs and linked throughout its operation to military operations, the Augusta hangar today presents itself, rather than as an eerie ghost of a tragic and partly removed parenthesis, as a fascinating space that seduces with a brutal beauty. Since 2002 the Hangar Team Augusta association has been active, as a voluntary body, in the recovery and regeneration of the building and the six hectares of parkland that surround it, and managed the site between 2006 and 2012 through an agreement with the municipality. Today the area is closed for security reasons, but the Le Vie dei Tesori foundation has been granted the right to return to it and organize guided tours. "The opening of the hangar is part of a three-year agreement with the State Property Office in which Le Vie dei Tesori is committed to enhancing places of historical and cultural interest for three years, to engage communities and also attract future investment," said Laura Anello, president of the foundation.

For the future of the unique site in the world, associations and citizens dream of an open and usable park. The road still seems long both for reasons related to an endless bureaucracy and for lack of funds, but the goal - as expressed by the Hangar Team - seems clear: "a large area available to citizens in which it will be possible to carry out events of various kinds both in an enclosed space of unusual dimensions (the airship hangar precisely) and in open spaces surrounded by greenery (the park area) or in close contact with the sea (in the former hydroscalo area) having as a frame the Garcia and Vittoria forts and, in the background, the city."