Industrial Nuclear Heritage. La Centrale del Garigliano nell’opera di Riccardo Morandi.

The Garigliano Nuclear Power Plant stands as a pivotal landmark in the technological and socio-economic transformation of the Italian South during the Cold War. Its attainment of criticality in 1963 signaled Italy’s entry into the realm of civilian nuclear energy, the result of international cooperation and national aspirations for modernization. The history of the plant reveals the intersections between geopolitical strategies, emerging energy policies and industrial innovation, while also foregrounding the architectural and structural significance of Riccardo Morandi’s design. His integrated approach, combining engineering experimentation, functional rigor and expressive form, conferred on the complex a distinct identity within the landscape of mid-twentieth-century Italian infrastructure. Yet its surviving structures, recognized as elements of national architectural heritage, now constitute a lieu de mémoire in which the material fabric of the site preserves the tensions, promises and contradictions of Italy’s nuclear modernity.