Nicola Carrino's Piazza Fontana in Taranto Abandoned and Decaying

Nicola Carrino's Piazza Fontana in Taranto, a landmark of Italian sculpture and urban planning, lies in a state of extreme neglect. The square, inaugurated in 1992, features modular steel sculptures and remnants of a 19th-century fountain destroyed by a flood in 1883. As of August 2018, the site is littered with trash, the steel modules are dented, graffiti covers surfaces, and the fountain basin is filthy. Carrino, a Taranto native who died in 2018, conceived the work as an urbanistic project integrating contemporary steel with historical fragments. The artist had expressed anger over the neglect. The article, by Lorenzo Madaro, calls for urgent restoration and community engagement to revive the space, emphasizing Carrino's belief that sculpture should be inhabitable and responsive to social space. Carrino was a founder of Gruppo 1 in the 1960s and a key figure in modular sculpture.