Il sistema fortificato del Doss Trento: tracce di militarizzazione dall'epoca napoleonica alla Grande Guerra

Modelling the different territories through the tangible "signs" of history, the long and complex process of militarization of the territories connected to the Great War has profoundly transformed the face of the whole of Europe. These traces have been often stratified on contexts previously used in military operations, identifying in the orographic characteristics of the territories themselves their intrinsic vocation to become fortified sites. In this regard, at the same time wedged in the Alpine arc and leaning towards the Italian plain, the Trentino-Tyrolean Saliente has always represented a strategic position disputed by the main European powers. In the specific area of southern Tyrol, thanks to its peculiar morphology and conformation as an "isolated hill", the “Doss Trento” has been chosen since ancient times as a defence and control place not only for the Trentino capital but also for the surrounding area. Despite its strategic importance became clearly evident during the Great War as the nerve centre of the Trento's fortress, the fortification process of the rocky spur already starts in the previous centuries and turns out to be the result of multiple political-military seasons. This paper aims to analyse the repeated adaptations for defensive purposes that interested “Doss Trento” from the early years of the nineteenth century until 1914, to better understand the development of the fortification of the hill at the dawn of the Great War. The analysis of existing documents and the comparison between historical maps referring to different epochs with the current situation (also through GIS elaborations) have made easier the recognition of the hill as a multi-layered palimpsest, whose military vocation is not linked only to the contingent historical-political conditions but is deeply connected to the morphological conformation of the territory and to the networks of physical and visual relations that have involved it.