Italy's first ONB Alpine colonia climatica: more than fresh air, exercise, and propaganda?

By the end of the 1930s in Italy, ambitious winter and summer camps or colonie cimatiche for the young had been erected along Italy's coastline and in its Alpine resorts. Here, thousands of Italian children from the country's urban centres were sent to experience a regime of fresh air, exercise and Fascist propaganda. The small village of Fai in the autonomous province of Trento in the Italian Alps was home to the first such Alpine colonia managed by the Italian Fascist youth organisation, the Opera Nazionale Balilla. Through an examination of a range of contemporary Italian publications, this article will reveal how the Alpine colonia climatica went beyond its official remit of ‘climatic assistance to childhood’. It offers evidence of the Fascist regime's exploitation of these establishments in newly-annexed Trentino as a tool to unify and italianise, and argues that they were used to promote a militarised view of the national landscape.