Does anyone know the size of the large bricks that are seen behind the stucco of WWII Italian buildings? The ones that are usually a grey or sand color.

hi Dan,
what you refer to shuld be concrete bricks.
they are about 30 cm wide, 40 cm long and 20 cm high and have 2 large square holes in them (have always saw them grey, by the way).
i am not so sure you could use them in a wwii dio, though....
older houses in Italy were made of the usual red bricks or even stones or a mix of the two. My great great grand mother lived in the country in a farm which walls were alternate layers of brick and stones found in the fields.... and I'll link a concrete brick to the reconstruction after the end of the war than to something built before it. so check your references. to have some visual of the brick themselves, google 'mattoni in cemento'.
happy modelling
ciao
edo

Hi Dan

As Eduardo correctly said, old italian houses weren't made with concrete bricks.

Concrete wasn't so diffuse in Italy during the ww2. The few buildings made in concrete were in bigger cities and usually they were industrial plants. Moreover the construction made with concrete bricks don't usually have a large spread in Italy, they are more common in France.

Where are you going to set your diorama? Did you collected any reference pics?

Knowing that, I think we'll be able to help you in a better way

Cheers

Thanks guys, I couldn't ask for better help than from 2 guys from the source! What I am trying to do, is scratch build a common city building that would be found in Monte Cassino. All of the ref pics that I've found from WWII are far distance pics in black and white and don't provide much detail. All the pics of modern italy..., well I can't tell how old they are. I guess a residential or small business structure, in an urban setting would be more of what I am looking to build. As for color, Gray? Thanks for your help guys, hopefully this clarifies more of what I trying to acgieve.

Dan

Also, I guess that I got the idea of large bricks (or maybe they're square stones) from the Miniart #35508 Italian City Building. Are the colrs of this box art correct?

Dan

If you contact me direct I can provide some pics of the ruins of the old town of Cassino, and some of the 'new' - that is new in 1944. Many of the old town buildings were stone construction. I have a picture of what appear to be concrete blocks in use in the nearby Liri Valley in 1944, but how common that was I have no idea. rowep @ xtra.co.nz

Thanks Rowe, that woulkd be great. I sent you an emial.

Dan

Actually houses are made in stones or bricks and they often have plaster on the walls.

If you look for references and pic in colors you can widen your internet researches using also the words:

FROSINONE

FRASCATI

CIOCIARIA

SORA

BASSO LAZIO

ANAGNI

ALATRI

They are places near Cassino so the architecture is the same

Here you can find some pics in color

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luigistrano/sets/72157594500624292/with/382769222/

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=CIOCIARIA

You can also watch a famous 1960 war film set in Ciociaria called "La ciociara".

http://www.archive.org/details/LaCiociaraTwoWomen1


I hope this is useful for you

cheers

Awesome!!! Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very very much! Always find what your lookinh for here.

As for cement blocks...



Liri Valley 1944

Interesting indeed

Most likely this is a ruin of a Fascist barrack or the remains of a regime building.

In that area there were (and actually the are also nowadays) a lot of ancient buildings. The most modern of them were built at most in late 1800 early 1900, so they couldn't be made in concrete.
Concrete buildings had began to appear in Italy about in 1920-1930, but they was quite rare. Fascist government, following a propagandistic intentions, often built military stations, airfields, town halls and party headquarters using the most modern technologies such as the concrete structures

Thanks a lot for sharing Ropeynz

The text claims that the turret was built inside a house but I am sceptical as the bricks seem too evenly spread over the turret base to have collapsed that way naturally, there is no sign of roofing material, and I don't think the crew would have risked the gun being obstructed at a key moment. Having said that, at least some of them were roughly stacked, so perhaps loose walls were built and pushed inwards some time before the battle. Either way I would doubt it was a substantial building, and even suspect that the bricks were brought to the site. Now there is a builders' warehouse on the location, so perhaps its forerunner had a stock of blocks?

Or maybe someone was building a new house made with "new" concrete bricks but he hadn't built the roof yet. But although it would be interesting, I think that unfortunately it's almost impossible to discover it
Anyway as I said, concrete constructions were incredibly rare in rural areas of Italy during the world war two. In my humble opinion a diorama with those buildings would seem quite unrealistic

Thanks again

cheers

hey guys, thanks so much for all the arscitectual help with the brick / concrete questions I had. One more question; are the semi-circle mediteranian roof tiles very common in Italy during WWII? If not, what was the most common? Thanks again.

Dan

Yes they are the same tile roofs that you can see nowadays





http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Province_of_Frosinone

cheers

Nice! I had no idea that they came in such an array of colors.

Dan

It depends on the different wear of roof tiles

In general the oldest are lighter than the newest