Italian homes look like swastikas from above

Residents of a complex of villas in southern Italy were surprised to find recently that their homes, when viewed from above, look like giant swastikas.

The story went viral after Google Maps images of the houses began circulating on social media, Italy’s Nano Press website reported. It is now causing “uproar and indignation” because of the homes’ “embarrassing Nazi symbolism.”

According to the site, the swastikas, formed each by four housing units, may have been overlooked during the project’s design.

The houses are in a neighborhood of the small town of Specchiolla in the Province of Brindisi.

The homes are relatively new and were built in the 1990s. One possible explanation for the swastikas may be the use of L-shaped modular units, which were arranged in a cross to maximize exposure to the sun and optimize the planning of the landscape viewed from each of the houses.

Indeed, another neighborhood near “swastika-ville” uses similar modular housing units, and these hark back to neither the Third nor any other Reich.

View of a building in the Coronado Naval Base, southern California, resembling a Nazi swastika or Hindu svastika in shape. (Screen capture Google Maps)

Nano Press noted that the Specchiolla homes are not the first instance in which Google Maps aficionados scan satellite images of urban spaces in search of architects with allegedly nefarious agendas.

A US naval base in Coronado, southern California also looks a giant Nazi cross — originally a Hindu symbol of good fortune. The US Navy invested some $600,000 in 2008 in order to disguise the shape of the building as much as possible, all because of its shape through the satellite images provided by Google Maps.