The Documentation of Antonellis’ Fortresses, a research between two worlds

The research project for the documentation of the Antonellis’ fortresses has begun since 2005 with a research on the Fort San Pedro de la Roca in Santiago de Cuba in collaboration with Cuban institutions. From the first documentation campain of the image of the fort and the bay has been developed a research project, coordinated between university and local institution with Italian researchers, which led to the achievement of an accurate survey of the fortress and to the study of the general defence system of the bay of Santiago de Cuba. From this synergy with local historians and superintendences, the project was put into action with a series of panels, exhibited in the Morro Museum, promoting the development of the idea of a widespread museum on the Antonellis’ work. The works of the Antonellis, Italian engineers from Gatteo, who in the sixteenth century organized the defence strategy of the European colonies in Central America, can be considered a cultural link between the Italian Renaissance tradition and the expressions of colonial architecture, in the historic period widely spread in the overseas territories. Significant example of the expression of Italian and Spanish culture in Central America, nowadays the fortresses built by the Antonellis are world-wide considered to be important cultural monuments, protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, and representing the symbol of the region they are built in. The project carried out by the Antonellis consisted in organizing a territorial defensive system, a network of fortresses and ramparts in defence of the Spanish territories.