Rural Landscape Heritage in the Inner Areas as Repository of Culture

Abstract

Rural landscape as heritage represents the relationship between social, cultural and biological systems. As a productive and complex heritage, rural landscape encompasses a multitude of structural elements and the connections between them. The success of latest approaches for the preservation and development of rural heritage sets in the active participation of communities that have created, maintained and inhabited these sites over time and in the delineation of adaptive site-specific management plans.

In Italy, the progressive depopulation and the abandonment of traditional rural practices are considered among the main vulnerability factors of the historical rural landscape. The research systematizes data for the selection of sites and areas according to the National Register of Historical Rural Landscapes and to the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI). The association between the data in the sites examined has allowed to understand correspondences and differences among vulnerabilities and potentialities as identified by the National Strategy for Inner Areas and by the National Register of Historical Rural Landscapes.

The investigation identifies which of the sites recognized as rural heritage are set in areas considered as far from basic services to citizenship and which actions have been addressed. Therefore, fragilities and potentialities of the rural landscape in the Inner Areas are set at the center of the research.