The province of Massa Carrara lays in Italy, in the northern part of Tuscany and offers an interesting modern architectural heritage, often neglected. This heritage is especially concentrated in the main cities of Massa and Carrara and in their surroundings, such the settlements nearby the seaside: Marina di Massa and Marina di Carrara. You can point out the presence of a lot of public and private buildings realized in the XX century which represent signs on the territory, also signed by very important architects. Among the public buildings there are, for example, the Post Offices of Massa and of Carrara designed by Angiolo Mazzoni and by Giuseppe Boni, very different between them but very representative of the image which the central power wanted to transmit of itself on the territory during the early thirties. Very interesting is also the system of the holiday camps along the sea, with, among the others, the FIAT tower (1933) by Vittorio Bonadè Bottino (quite similar to the one in Sestriere), the Colonia XXVIII Ottobre (1936), by Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Guaittioli, very innovative and significant respectively for the exaltation of the functional and constructive elements and for the formal essentiality typical of the modern architecture. Among the big interventions there are also the INA CASA quarters of the 50 and 60 years of San Leonardo in Massa and of San Luca in Carrara. There are a lot other interesting realisation such other collective buildings and also private houses and dwellings by Enrico Del Debbio, Edoardo Detti, Aldo Rossi, Ettore Sottsass Jr. This heritage obviously needs to be protected and correctly and consciously used, but that common people’s perception of it is not very significant. On one side the buildings built before the II world war are in fact associated to an historical period difficult for Italy and especially for this territory, for months on the fire line, and so simply defined as of “fascist” age. On the other the one built after the war usually are, instead, easily collocated in the period of the savage colonization of the territory with the consequent abuses and shambles, common all over the country. Naturally the historians, the architects, the engineers, very well know the value of this heritage, but it is not so easy to communicate it to the citizens, to sensitize them and the local institutions to protection activities. The first way to do this is to transmit the knowledge of this heritage in order to increase their interest. In a territory so saturated of buildings would be very important to widely diffuse a correct consideration of the role of this heritage, that has not to be frozen just as a monument, but, with correct interventions, can be utilized for original or new functions. These buildings are, in fact very often huge and in a good condition and represent not an obstacle, but a real resort: very often people use this heritage for common activities, public services and just doesn’t realize the value of it. The Post Office of Massa is a symbol of this situation: it was designed as the centre of the new city by one of the major architects of the period, it is very interesting and carefully constructed. Now, after the decentralization of a lot of its functions, it could be transformed in a centre of documentation of the architectural and cultural heritage of the XX century, not only a museum, but a site in which get, visiting it too, a new point of view, a new lecture of these modern and contemporary signs and of their real and big potentialities for all the community. A building born as a signal of the new architecture and of the new culture, after 70 years free from political prejudices, could be again a signal for the knowledge and the protection of that zeitgeist’s products.
