Borgo Schirò, the ruins of an agricultural colony of fascist Italy in Sicily

After coming to power in 1922, Benito Mussolini launched an ambitious project to build agricultural colonies in Italy.

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These colonies were intended to reduce the number of large estates, increase wheat production, prevent the exodus from the countryside to the cities and, in doing so, generate a class of small agricultural landowners loyal to the fascist regime. Some 150,000 people settled in the new agricultural colonies of Mussolini's dictatorship, a project that Francisco Franco's regime attempted to imitate in Spain from 1939 onwards, with much more modest results. In addition to their importance for the economy, Mussolini's agricultural colonies contributed to the spread of fascist ideology even from an architectural point of view, promoting a rationalist style inspired by the Bauhaus School in Germany.

A good example of such a settlement was Sicily's Borgo Schirò, named after Giacomo Schirò, an Italian soldier stabbed to death by communist militants in Piana degli Albanesi on July 23, 1920. Located about 9 km northwest of Corleone and 25 km southwest of Palermo, this village was built in 1939 and officially opened on December 18, 1940. The village included a school, a grocery store, a medical center, a church, and a restaurant. It once had about 100 inhabitants and survived, with some damage, the Second World War. However, by the end of the 1950s it fell into decline, and many of its residents emigrated to the cities. By 1970, only one family remained, the one that ran the grocery store, and the parish priest, who was the last inhabitant to leave the town with the arrival of the new millennium.

The channel Aventuras Entresierras (which I recommend you subscribe to if you like urban exploration) has published a video visiting the ruins of Borgo Schirò and explaining its history (the video is in Spanish, you can activate automatic English subtitles in the bottom bar of the player):

You can see some screenshots from this interesting video here. We begin with a beautiful panoramic shot of Borgo Schirò and its surroundings, in which we can see the farmland surrounding this ghost town.

The ruins of the old school, now walled up. All the town's establishments were duly labeled with the same font.

Next to the medical center was an antimalarial laboratory, built to help eradicate malaria.

The tallest building in the town is the church, with a bell tower on top of which you can read the Latin phrase "Ora et labora" (Pray and work), a very common motto of the Benedictine Order.