Carthago Delenda Est: these words of Cato the Censor give structure, strength and drama to the statement that best summarizes
the folly behind an act of deliberate destruction. Even today, scholars of geopolitics and military science regard this
phrase as the logical antecedent of total warfare, the modern concept of war that has been concretely developed and brought
to its most lethal outcomes, especially in the last 100 years. The goal of this research is therefore to work within a specific
time frame, 1945-2025, focusing on cities that have been (some unfortunately still are) theaters of war, real landscapes of desolation
due to deliberate operations of annihilation. The book introduces an original reflection on the theme of war, focusing
on the urban scenario, highlighting what has been suffered, and reflecting on the fact that the consequences, both for
citizens and for urban spaces, do not end after the ceasefire. The insane will to erase a city develops over time, proceeding
with violence and persistence, not with stratification but with continuous and constant subtraction. Organized in four sections
– The Days Before the End, The Days After, Policies and Processes of Urban Reconstruction, and Architects from the Frontline
– the book provides an overall picture of the theaters of war of the last 80 years (Berlin, Hiroshima, Sarajevo, Prishtina,
Mariupol’, Kharkiv, Irpin’, Gaza) through a deliberately choral perspective.