Occupied Monument

Forte Prenestino and the Creative Rewriting of Ruins

Abstract

Forte Prenestino, located on the outskirts of Rome, is a former military fort reappropriated as an occupied social center and a vibrant node of activism, creativity, and cultural production. Constructed in the late nineteenth century as part of Italy’s post-unification defensive infrastructure, the fort was eventually abandoned and fell into disrepair. Its occupation by local collectives in 1986 marked a radical intervention that departed from both state-led restoration frameworks and conventional heritage frameworks.

This article examines the reappropriation of Forte Prenestino as a case of adaptive reuse driven by anarchists, punks, artists, students, community activists, and radical leftist movements. These groups transformed a symbol of militarism and neglect into a space of communal life, artistic expression, and political resistance. Their reactivation of the Forte Prenestino site challenges traditional preservation models, which often reinforce dominant cultural narratives and the aesthetic values imposed by hegemonic culture. Here, inclusion entails not merely access to the site for marginalized groups but the active participation of marginalized identities in shaping spatial and cultural meaning. Resistance is enacted through practices of occupation, horizontal governance, and anti-capitalist cultural production—graffiti, murals, and ephemeral installations—that resist commodification and institutional control.

By foregrounding collective action and creative transformation, this study calls for more inclusive, dynamic approaches to preservation—approaches that embrace decay as a generative condition, rather than as failure. Forte Prenestino stands as a compelling example of how historical ruins can become laboratories of collective creativity where space is continuously rewritten through cultural production, resistance, and everyday use.