Awareness of the past and responsibility for the future, diffused regeneration of Barionia

Students Caterina Cimaschi, Camilla Cristini, Marta de Boer \ Supervisor Stefano Stabilini

Awareness of the past and responsibility for the future diffused regeneration of Baronia

Caterina Cimaschi 918917 Camilla Cristini 918943 Marta de Boer 918937

Students Caterina Cimaschi, Camilla Cristini, Marta de Boer \ Supervisor Stefano Stabilini

Awareness of the past and responsibility for the future diffused regeneration of Baronia

Master of Science in Sustainable Architecture and Landscape Design School of Architecture Urban Planning Costruction Engineering A.A 2019/2020

Content

00 Abstract

01 1

Inland areas 1.1 Introduction 1.2 What are inland areas 1.3 The strategies 1.3.1 La Strategia Nazionale Aree Interne (SNAI) 1.3.2 National Strategy green communities 1.4 The primary sector in Inland Areas 1.5 Rural tourism 1.6 Small villages at the time of Covid-19

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3 3 6 10 15 17 18

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Survey

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Methodology

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4.1 Carapelle Calvisio 4.2 Calascio 4.3 Santo Stefano di Sessanio 4.4 Castelvecchio Calvisio 4.5 Q&A

63 67 71 75 77

5.1 Introduction 5.2 Analysis 5.2.1 National scale (XL) 5.2.2 Regional scale (L) 5.2.3 Baronia scale (M) 5.2.4 Urban scale (S) 5.3 Strategy 5.3.1 Regional scale (L) 5.3.2 Baronia scale (M) 5.3.3 Urban Scale (S)

104 104 104 104 107 110 114 114 117 124

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Case study

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Baronia case

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2.1 Introduction 2.2 Rebirth from the rubble 2.3 Transformation thanks to art 2.4 Young people for the future of the village 2.5 New Inhabitants, future bearers of heritage 2.6 Tourism as a resource for conservation 2.7 Network for preserve 2.8 Environmental network

25 26 28 30 32 36 38 40

3.1 Inland Areas: Abruzzo 3.1.1 Demographic trends 3.2 Baronia di Carapelle 3.2.1 The history 3.2.2 The historical routes 3.2.3 Depopulation 3.3 2009 Seismic Event 3.4 Castelvecchio Calvisio

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06 Project 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Masterplan 6.3 Town landmark 6.4 Natural hub 6.4.1 Botanical garden 6.4.2 Polyfunctional centre 6.5 References

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07 131 132 132 134 144 146 150 160

Bibliography/sitography

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00. Abstract

Network, sustainability, natural and architectural heritage, depopulation, reuse, ecotourism, inland areas, collaboration The following thesis work is the result of an interest in the issues faced during the attendance at a workshop organised by Emergency Architecture and Human Rights (EAHR) held in L’Aquila.

The project area, the barony of Carapelle Calvisio, is part of the so-called inland areas of Italy and consists of four small villages in Abruzzo: Carapelle, Castelveccchio, Calascio and Santo Stefano di Sessanio, which are part of the Gran Sasso National Park.

The general idea is to revitalise these ghost towns through the creation of a network that will enable greater collaboration between the four villages. The aim is to strengthen the existing community and to create interest in new people from outside the local society who become interested in local traditions and contribute innovative ideas to settle in these villages, thus creating the future of the barony.

The aim of this project is to revive the local economy of these fascinating places with a wealth of potential by fighting depopulation through an increase in services and controlled ecotourism and by enhancing the characteristics and peculiarities of the place, without forgetting the opinion and proposals of the people who have always lived in these villages.

Starting from these assumptions, we would like to develop a concrete project, based on the themes of reuse and sustainability, focusing on urban and landscape regeneration of the site, which is unique in terms of its natural and architectural heritage.

00. Abstract

Network, sostenibilità, patrimonio naturalistico e architettonico, spopolamento, riuso, ecoturismo, aree interne, collaborazione

Il seguente lavoro di tesi nasce dall’interesse per le tematiche affrontate durante la partecipazione a un workshop organizzato da Emergency Architecture and Human Rights (EAHR) svolto a L’Aquila.

L’area di progetto, la baronia di Carapelle Calvisio, è parte delle cosiddette aree interne italiane e si sviluppa in quattro piccoli borghi abruzzesi: Carapelle, Castelveccchio, Calascio e Santo Stefano di Sessanio, facenti parte del Parco Nazionale del Gran Sasso.

L’idea generale é quella di ridare vita a questi paesi ormai fantasma attraverso la creazione di un network che permetterà maggiore collaborazione tra i quattro borghi. L’obiettivo sarà quindi il rafforzamento della comunità esistente e la nascita di interesse in nuove persone esterne alla società locale, che appassionandosi alle tradizioni locali e contribuendo con idee innovative possano stabilirsi in questi paesi, costituendo in questo modo il futuro della baronia.

Con questo progetto si vuole riavviare l’economia locale di questi luoghi affascinanti e ricchi di potenziale contrastando lo spopolamento attraverso l’aumento di servizi e di un ecoturismo controllato e valorizzando le caratteristiche e le peculiarità del posto, senza dimenticarsi del parere e delle proposte delle persone che da sempre vivono in questi borghi.

Partendo da questi presupposti, si vuole sviluppare un progetto concreto, basato sui temi del riuso e della sostenibilità, focalizzandosi sulla rigenerazione urbana e del paesaggio del luogo, unico nel suo genere per quanto riguarda il patrimonio naturalistico e architettonico.

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01

Inland Areas

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1.1 Introduction

Img. 1 - Seismic map

Italy, an articulated and complex country that came late to unification compared to other major European countries, has experienced at least two strong censorships in its republican history: the cultural one of 1968 and the political-institutional one of 1992-1994. Still today it risks, in its now chronic difficulty in the technological transition and in the change of the urban fabric, to lose its anchorages, identity and history in its sometimes anxious search for renewal, which too often results in “gattopardismo”.

The term “gattopardismo”, as well as the conception and the praxis that are expressed with it, is founded on the paradoxical affirmation that “everything must change so that everything remains as before”, [...] which is the most widespread adaptation with which is cited the passage that in the novel “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is read textually in this form “If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change”. (Treccani definition)

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The data, statistics and indicators tell us of the emergence of a real territorial issue in Italy, with a marked polarization between territories in which opportunities, resources, services and investments are concentrated and territories in which aging, scarcity, poverty and desertification are accentuated.

A great territorial issue, represented by the need to rediscover Italy for what it is. That is, a dense network of small communities, scattered in rural and mountainous areas around a hundred cities and a few, true metropolises of the country, in those inland areas that impose themselves to the story and national interest only on the occasion of an earthquake, a flood, a disaster that captures the attention of the general public. (Img 1, Img 2)

Img. 2 - Landslide map

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1.2. What inland areas are The identification of the internal areas is defined by exclusion, of the definition of “Center of offer services”, that is that territorial dimension, municipality or aggregate of neighboring municipalities, with a large high school offer (presence of a high school and a professional technical institute), with at least one hospital Dea seat (with internal units of first aid, observation and reanimation) of first level and a railway station of at least Silver type (with attendance of passengers greater than 2500 units per day).

Based on distance to the nearest offering center, territories were classified into:

- Belt, distant no more than 20 minutes; - Intermediate, distant from 20 to 40 minutes; - Peripheral, distant from 40 to 75 minutes; - Ultra-peripheral, distant more than 75 minutes.

Img. 3 - Italy demography (istat.it)

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The presence is diffused on all the territory of our country, but in greater number insist in the regions of the Center-South and on the Apennine dorsal.

The classification by inland areas was introduced in Italy starting in 2012, as will be discussed in more detail in the following paragraph, with the aim of framing public policies on an often forgotten issue.

Since the post-war period, “inland” Italy has undergone progressive marginalization: the resident population has decreased, as has the level of employment and the supply of services. These processes have been accompanied by others of equal or greater gravity, such as hydrogeological instability. In particular, we have assisted in previous decades a progressive deceleration of national population growth, which in the near future will lead to a reduction in population in absolute terms, as a result of lower births and increased deaths due to the progressive aging of the population, which results in a greater number of deaths. (Img.3) The theme of the internal areas is therefore that of territories that for geographical and infrastructural reasons measure their distance from the urban network, from a network that increasingly functions as an integrated and interconnected system of which the dynamic component must be taken into consideration.

Inland areas represent a very large part of the country: they include over 4000 municipalities, most of which are mountainous, about three-fifths of the national territory and just under a quarter of the population. They are territories characterized by distinctive aspects such as the distance from large centers of agglomeration and essential services (education, health, mobility). They are also sparsely populated areas, but endowed with important natural and cultural resources; therefore, territories with strong development potential on which to test good governance practices.

Italy’s small towns are an extraordinary resource that speaks to the world, and not a problem, an exception to be brought back to order, as Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect of Ground Zero, reminded us in a 2016 interview when he said that Italy’s small towns “enclose the DNA of humanity, their evolution speaks of the dignity of people, because everything, from the streets to the stairs, to the squares, was born to facilitate relationships, a culture that puts man and his needs at the center, creating dialogue and releasing color and beauty.”

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Img. 4 - National parks

In order to face the challenges of our time, starting from the security of the territories from seismic and climatic risks, we need the strength and the presidium of the 5585 small Italian municipalities under 5000 inhabitants, which represent about 70% of the 7998 Italian municipalities, about 60% of the national territory, where more than 10 million citizens live, that is, 16.59% of the Italian population, and many of them go there for family or elective reasons, where 93% of the DOP and IGP products are produced, together with 79% of the most prestigious wines, but also a large part of the Made in Italy appreciated all over the world.

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high

low

Img. 5 - Municipalities < 5000 inhabitants

In addition, it must be taken into account that inland areas constitute the largest part of the national natural and landscape heritage, including one of the widest varieties in terms of species of flora and fauna on the planet. (Img. 4) Moreover, Abruzzo, the region in which the project area is located, has in relative terms, 82.3% of municipalities with a population of less than 5000 units, well above the national average that shows an incidence in terms of relative value of the same equal to 69.5% of all municipalities. (Img. 5)

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1.3 The strategies In 2002, on the occasion of the first edition of Voler Bene all’Italia, the national festival of small municipalities promoted by Legambiente, the President of the Republic Carlo Azelio Ciampi in his greeting wrote:

“These villages, these countries represent a presidium of civilization.

They are an integral part, constitutive of our identity, of our Homeland.

They can be a suitable place for the initiatives of young entrepreneurs.

Informatics and technologies can favour this process. This great adventure can also become an opportunity to be taken”.

And it is precisely this vision that inspired the law on small municipalities, approved by the Chamber of Deputies with the unanimous vote of the House on September 28, 2016, which provides measures to encourage the spread of broadband, a more rational and efficient endowment of services, soft mobility itineraries and soft tourism, the promotion of agri-food production with a short chain, simplifications for the recovery of historic centers in abandonment or at risk of depopulation to be converted into widespread hotels, land maintenance works with priority to environmental protection, the safety of roads and schools, energy efficiency of public and private building heritage and interventions in favor of residents and productive activities established in smaller centers.

The law in question proposes an idea of a country that looks to new forms of economy, which focuses on cohesion, which combines history, culture and traditional knowledge with innovation, new technologies, green economy, proposing to implement territorial policies aimed at recovering the concept of “planning”, typical of past seasons, with a medium to long term perspective.

1.3.1. La Strategia nazionale aree interne (SNAI) The National Strategy for Internal Areas is indicated by the Italian government as a focal point of the Piano nazionale di riforma (Pnr). A plan to contrast the demographic fall and to relaunch the development and the services of these areas through ordinary funds of the stability law and Sie funds (European structural and investment funds).

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The idea was launched in September 2012, during a technical seminar held in Rome (“The internal areas: new strategies for the 2014-2020 programming of territorial cohesion policy”) by the Minister pro tempore for Territorial Cohesion Fabrizio Barca at the start of the Community programming cycle 2014-2020.

Subsequently, the Strategy was developed by a working group specifically set up: the Technical Committee for Internal Areas, today coordinated by the Department for Cohesion Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

The Committee’s objective is to create a common path to enhance the local productive realities by exalting the offer of essential public services.

In December 2012, with the document Methods and objectives for the effective use of EU funds 2014-2020, proposed by the Minister for Territorial Cohesion, in agreement with the Ministers of Labour, Social Policies and Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, the strategy was presented as a methodological innovation.

The paradigm of the entire strategy is the principle that there can be no economic development without social inclusion; services and development must go hand in hand. It is with this spirit that the National Strategy for Internal Areas is transmitted to Europe as an attachment to the draft Partnership Agreement in December 2013, the negotiation of which formally ends on October 29, 2014 with the adoption by the European Commission.

The selection of the areas takes place through a process of public inquiry, carried out by all central administrations, which together with the regions are part of the Inland Areas Technical Committee.

Fundamental requirement for municipalities is the associated management of fundamental functions and services, consistent with the Strategy, which is considered an essential condition for the signing of the dell’Accordo di programma quadro (Apq). The ultimate objective is, in fact, the constitution of permanent inter-municipal systems. Once the phase of public inquiry is concluded, the regions, with a resolution of the council, formally decide on the identification of the project areas and among these identify the pilot area, the first on which to test the method, committing at the same time to allocate on these areas, to integrate national resources, allocations of Sie funds.

Once the areas have been selected, the realization of the interventions

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passes through special Accordi di programma quadro between local authorities, regions and central administrations.

Among the pilot areas, a prototype is identified, that is, the first of the selected areas to begin the process of implementing the Snai (Img. 6).The related area strategy aims to indicate the guidelines for reversing the negative trends taking place in the area, starting from the needs and resources actually available and building development interventions and permanent interventions on essential services, also leveraging on the enhancement of current experiences1.

Img. 6 - SNAI inland areas

Implementation of the Strategy is through the allocation of both national resources, from the Stability Act, and from the Sie funds.

The 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 budget laws allocated 90 million for the three-year period 2014-2016, 90 million for strengthening the strategy in the three-year period 2015-2017, and an additional 10 million for the three-year period 2016-2018. In addition, an additional 90 million was appropriated for the 2019-2021 triennium.

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The objective of the Strategy is to improve, in the selected areas, the accessibility of essential services such as, mainly, education, mobility and health. (Img. 7) Specifically: - increase the well-being of the local population; - increase local demand for labor and employment; - increase the degree of utilization of territorial capital; - reduce the social costs of de-anthropization; - strengthen local development factors.

Strategia Nazionale delle Aree Interne POLICIES

Adapting policies for citizenship services: health education mobility

Local development project: territory protection environmental sustainability natural, cultural resorces and tourism enchancement of agro-food systems renewable energy cratfs

PRECONDITION OF LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

Growth: employement increase population increase use of territorial capital

Development: income increase social cohesion increase social costs reduction eco-systemic elements restoration maintenance of the historical and artistic capital

GOAL : Img. 7 - SNAI

reversal of demographic trends

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1.3.2. National Strategy green communities The law “Provisions on environmental matters to promote green economy measures and for the containment of excessive use of natural resources”, rapporteurs the honorable Enrico Borghi and Alessandro Bratti, approved on December 28, 2015 and published in the “Official Gazette” on January 18, 2016 represents an important milestone for our country: the first organic law text on green economy.

In an economy increasingly distant from fossil fuels and large metropolitan concentrations of capital, rural, inland and mountain areas become strategic because they are first and foremost reservoirs of natural resources. (Img. .4) Air, water, wood and soil are resources that can no longer be managed with old financial logics. The common goods of the mountains need a new management, which abandons the logic of welfarism and windfall interventions and marries those of associations, cooperation, inclusiveness, sustainable development and compensation for greenhouse gas emissions.

There are many interventions provided by the “green finance”, one of the most important is the introduction of a National Strategy of green communities. In fact, art. 72 calls for the preparation of a sustainable development plan for the enhancement of the resources of rural and mountain areas in different fields: from energy from renewable sources to tourism, from water resources to agro-forestry heritage, from the building heritage to energy efficiency and intelligent integration of plants and networks, in relation with urban areas, with the aim of “opening a new subsidiary relationship and exchange with urban and metropolitan communities”.

Other major points in the law include: - the reclamation of asbestos; - the “made green in italy” brand, to indicate the environmental footprint of products; - the introduction of oil free zones: territorial areas in which the progressive substitution of oil and its derivatives with energy from renewable sources will be implemented; - the hydrogeological risk fund with resources allocated to municipalities that decide to remove works carried out in areas at hydrogeological risk; - attention to electric and sustainable mobility;

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- support for differentiated waste collection; - incentives for green purchasing; - simplifications for Green Public Procurement, through the introduction in the Public Contracts Code of a rule for the application of minimum environmental criteria in public procurement of supplies and contracting of services; - the introduction of health impact assessment; - the strengthening of the water service; - the establishment of the Natural Capital Committee.

In 2010, thanks to the agreement signed by Uncem (Unione nazionale comuni comunità enti montani) with the Ministry of Environment and Protection of Land and Sea, the project “Green Communities in the Convergence Objective Regions”, which is part of the “Poi – Energie rinnovabili e risparmio energetico Fesr 2007-2013”, financed by EU and national funds.

Green communities is not just a brand, it is also a model of management and enhancement of the territory according to new ways of using natural resources but also structural, that is, in reference to the buildings that insist on the territory. Incentivizing energy requalification and efficiency measures for publicly owned buildings means making a common asset profitable while responding to the need to activate measures aimed at reducing the environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions in our cities.

1.4. The primary sector in inland areas In inland areas the agricultural, pastoral and forestry sectors almost always play a central role, both as economic opportunities and for the value of environmental care and prevention. The management of agricultural land can play a particularly important role in areas characterized by high levels of landslide risk and hydrogeological instability. The presidium of pastoralism in mountain areas contributes to the vitality of these areas and also brings an essential contribution to the maintenance of biodiversity and the contrast to soil degradation.

The ability to live and interpret the forest not as a mere effect of the abandonment of agriculture, but as an opportunity can allow to obtain through improved forest management, positive impacts on the environment and the creation of new jobs. To achieve these results it is necessary to work on the reconstruction of relationships along the

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local supply chains, starting from agriculture and the strengthening of agro-silvo-pastoral activities with a strong identity value. This is a passage, essentially of social innovation.

Here we often come up against problems linked to the difficulty of access to pastures by local breeders, linked to obsolete grazing calendars or to the way in which pasture quotas are assigned by the municipalities, with land fragmentation that makes farm operations complex and is aggravated by the presence of unused land, even in the presence of owners unwilling to take care of it also due to the absence of solutions that guarantee its management in case of expropriation.

The area strategies approved during 2018 include several areas of intervention for the development part. Among these, the area of agriculture and animal husbandry, to which 15% of the resources allocated to development go, emerged from the analyses carried out by the Committee as an area of experimentation and innovation, in relation to the solutions that are being identified to achieve the results identified.

In this context, the main results on which the strategies approved have focused untill today in terms of agricultural issues concern growth in the market value of production and an increase in agricultural land. Among the results expected from the actions foreseen for agriculture and zootechnics in the strategies approved to date, increasing the market value of local agricultural and zootechnical production represents a crucial point in the strategies implemented.

The solutions proposed start from pre-existing productive realities to propose options for intervention that restore value to agriculture in these areas and work on strengthening and spreading technical skills and improving the ability of farmers to access innovation.

The focus on expected results has guided the choice of efficient and effective actions with respect to the objectives. The co-design tables have represented valuable opportunities for comparison on the intervention options available for the livestock and agricultural sectors between local producers and breeders and other relevant actors for the sectors concerned (researchers, trainers, veterinarians, agronomists, local institutions, trade associations. Thanks to the contribution of competences and points of view from outside the area, this planning method has facilitated the comparison between the various levels of government and the interaction between operators and researchers during the strategy definition phase, as well as the identification of solutions calibrated to the specificities and vocations

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of the local technical and productive reality and able to mobilise the available human resources around shared projects.

Often the defined interventions include training and mentoring, to ensure that relevant stakeholders are informed and adequately involved, and that the skills and competencies of practitioners are enhanced from a proactive perspective, anticipating expected changes and facilitating innovation.

1.5. Rural Tourism Rural tourism is a growing segment with interesting development opportunities, thanks to its ability to respond to some of the emerging trends in tourist demand, which tend to favour less massified forms of tourism that are more attentive to the values of nature, culture, food and wine and the countryside.

Rural communities see tourism development as an opportunity to diversify the economy of rural areas and revitalise territories that would otherwise no longer be competitive in the face of market dynamics and changing agricultural policies.

Over the last decade, Italian farmers have interpreted a rural economy as keeping it alive, which today hinges on activities such as direct sales, short supply chains, rural hospitality and agri-tourism. New occupations that have enriched the farmer’s profession, enabling him to establish a new network of relationships that are reversing the flow of resources and people between town and country.

The interest in tourism as a factor in the development of rural areas is based on a number of elements, such as the need for a high level of employment with easily available training, thus guaranteeing a high level of involvement of the local population, especially women and young people, and the possibility for local players to start up new activities with even limited private investment but also to attract investment flows from outside.

Rural tourism introduces an innovation in the range of tourism offers in that it can provide a typical product such as an excursion or an itinerary, but of these it will offer the uniqueness of the experience, not the simple goodness of the product or services. What is new is

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that this type of offer, organised in destinations and packages, is for the first time promoted and structured as a “landscape”.

The aim of these activities is to make these communities tools for adding value and quality to agricultural production, giving the sector the opportunity to experiment with new production functions and to differentiate economic income. This is how neo-agriculture comes to terms with post-tourism: the Italian landscape, shaped by rural activities, becomes the protagonist of a sustainable economic renaissance.

The “Italian Landscapes” project aims at developing rural landscape tourism, with the general objective of promoting and networking Italian rural areas in terms of cultural and environmental heritage and typical products, and encouraging their tourist fruition. On the one hand, it pays attention to the ways in which institutional processes linked to landscape transformations can be supported and, on the other hand, to those processes that have to do with the value system of each individual, with his perception of pleasantness and well-being.

1.6. Small villages at the time of Covid-19 The debate on returning to Italy’s inland and mountainous areas, like the battle against depopulation that was already underway before the pandemic, has intensified in the wake of recent epidemiological phenomena, leading many individuals, also thanks to the opportunity to work remotely (smartworking), to consider a move from urban areas to the villages.

The months of the pandemic represent an important but at the same time very delicate moment. We are witnessing a sort of double movement (previous depopulation of the villages, followed by renewed interest in them) which paradoxically risks, at the very moment when the theme of marginalised areas and villages seems to impose itself in the public debate, being detrimental to inland areas.

On the one hand, new attention and sensitivity has been shown for these territories: a sort of karstic river that seems to emerge suddenly during the health emergency. It is a river made up of different tributaries: the many regeneration experiences that have been underway for years, the policies and practices of the National Strategy

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for Inner Areas, studies and project proposals from universities, and the long-term work of organisations such as the Unione Nazionale Comuni Comunità Enti Montani (UNCEM). Above all, however, there is a progressive and radical cultural metamorphosis, which has led to a new way of looking at the mountain and marginalised areas of the country.

For the first time, inland areas are seen as a space of opportunity and freedom, no longer necessarily as a mere landscape backdrop to the metropolises. Today, many young people see mountain and inland areas not as a problem, but as a central and privileged place where they can develop life, entrepreneurial and economic projects in line with the environment and with a certain idea of society. A space of contemporaneity. Moreover, first the National Strategy for Inland Areas and then the pandemic emergency led the many people who worked vertically in their own territories to get to know each other and unite.

The trend for villages and hamlets exploded particularly during the health crisis.

During the pandemic, many people temporarily moved to small villages, in many cases to their second homes. Some of them took advantage of the pandemic emergency to enrol their children in local schools. All their stories have similar traits: it’s great to live in an environment and landscape such as the mountains, but when the smartworking day is over, everyone has nowhere to go. Sure, you can go for great walks, but there is a lack of shops and basic services, places to socialise, to which are often added obstacles linked to the lack of adequate connections to the web.

On the basis of certain demographic and climate projections, it would appear that the next few years will see a gradual transition of population strata to mountain and inland areas. In fact, the combination of rising temperatures and humidity and the ageing of the population will force several tens of thousands of people to move to high-altitude areas for a few months a year. But all this cannot be improvised and requires planning in terms of scenarios and projects to face the future.

In addition, the small “picture postcard” villages located from the north to the south of our country could represent the only solution to save tourism, which has been seriously compromised by the Covid-19 crisis. This is what the British newspaper The Guardian claims in an article entitled “Italy deserted villages are the ideal escape for the

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pandemic post lockdown distancing” in which it gathers different experiences, with interviews with mayors and interventions by government representatives. The international travel blockade that has devastated tourism, which usually generates 13% of Italy’s PIL, has taken a 20 billion euro hit in the summer of 2020, partly due to the absence of tourism, despite the 4 billion euro tourism rescue legislative measures put in place, represented by a tax credit of up to 500 euros given to Italian families who went on holiday nationwide.

“Take your holidays in Italy,” Giuseppe Conte had suggested in parliament. “We will discover the beauties we don’t know yet.”

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Case Study

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2.1 Introduction

The problem of inner areas, as we mean it, is purely Italian and relatively a recent problem due to the depopulation from these places to large cities in search of work and fortune started around 1960.

It is precisely nowadays, with the arrival of COVID-19 that in our country people have begun to appreciate these places, which have remained suspended in an almost forgotten era, and which are now admired for their historical values ​​and magnificent natural landscapes.

The growing market of sustainable tourism can be the driving force to recover buildings and landscapes of our country, avoiding the phenomenon of abandonment and preserving its historical memory.

Recovery means returning to possession of what has been lost, the reacquisition of a disappeared condition, and is a usually complex action that must be able to combine respect for the existing (materials, forms, meanings, history) with the needs of the users.

Today, finally, the theme of minor historical centers seems to attract the attention of researchers, technicians, administrators and society.

Economy, politics, tourism, urban planning and architecture are just some of the various sectors of society that are taking an interest, each according to their own skills, in the protection and enhancement of these territorial areas.

Below we will deal with several case studies that can give ideas for possible design solutions for inner areas and for the recovery and development of forgotten villages, also showing us the mistakes that have been made and are not to be repeated.

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2.2 Rebirth from the rubble Cretto di Gibellina, Gibellina (TP), Italy Keywords: collaboration, art

In 1968 the earthquake in the Belice Valley struck a large area between Trapani and Palermo. Among the various villages affected there was Gibellina, a mountain village, which no longer exists.

To guard the wrecks is one of the greatest works of Land Art ever made in the world. The Cretto by Alberto Burri - built in the 1980s - is a concrete tomb lying on the ruins. Eight thousand square meters, for a walkable labyrinth, a funeral monument in the form of landscape, theater, sculpture.

A few kilometers from there rises Gibellina Nuova, where the survivors moved and life began again. Here Gibellina was reborn, in the name of a poetic utopia with a Renaissance flavor, becoming the stage for a series of urban interventions, revolutionary for the time. Artists and architects, supported by the country’s craftsmen, local businesses and citizens, designed this experiment-city.

There were churches, buildings, squares, monuments, sculptures, for a string of excellent names: Quaroni, Uncini, Venezia, Consagra, Cascella, Mendini, Purini, Pomodoro, Schifano, Paladino, Simeti ...

Over the years the Museum of Contemporary Art has enriched with

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about two thousand works, many positioned in the urban space, in some cases temporary as during f the Orestiadi festival.

It was called “ghostly disaster” and “new Brasilia”.

Obviously no one has started to argue about the value of the works, but about the conditions of abandonment, Gibellina appears as a ghost town where the inhabitants declare they don’t want to live there, the fundamental problem is that art is preferred to public services .

The new Brasilia was already born as an alien place, a modern flat polis, without a center and without a heart, not modeled on the profile of the small community of shepherds and farmers.

We can therefore speak of a territory at the service of art, rather than the other way around; an art that conquers, invades, modifies, imposes, forgetting to listen. Self-referential art and architecture. We are talking about a place that has never achieved an ideal completeness, a virtuous social development.

However, it was in 2016 that a sign of rebirth seemed to arrive thanks to the approach, the sensitivity, of Street Art and one of the most accredited names on the national and international scene. Sten Lex who gave the city another open-air work. The operation is conceived by the young culture councilor Giuseppe Zummo, who pursues the development of a method. The reconstruction of the city must follow the concepts of public art, sustainability, aesthetics, conservation, which are constantly changing. Citizen involvement has become fundamental. The contact with the artists is more direct. The artists are more involved in the study of the area and its works of art, they are dedicated to dialogue with the people and to learning about the history of the country.

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2.3 Transformation thanks to art Farm Cultural Park, Favara (AG), Italy Keywords: dreams, culture, participation

Transforming an abandoned historic center into a cultural and tourist attraction, subverting the identity of a town that has always been associated with the mafia, fugitives, illegal activities and the underworld in a place of art, culture and experimentation, in a small world capital of urban regeneration.

It was the rich notary Andrea Bartoli who chose Favara, his wife’s country of origin, as the place to found an independent cultural center: the Farm Cultural Park, the first “cultural tourist park” made in Sicily, a tangible example of “urban regeneration” recognized even by the EU. Farm Cultural Park has been defined as one of the most influential independent cultural centers of the contemporary cultural world and one of the most effervescent projects of rethinking and rebirth of the city. Over time, Farm has acquired some of the houses in the historic center of Favara, transforming them into contemporary art exhibition spaces, meeting spaces, open kitchens for workshops and lunches, cocktail bars, vintage shops and more. The area from abandoned and degraded has transformed into a cultural and artistic center capable of attracting visitors from all over the world, with more than one hundred thousand tourists every year.

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The data are clear, after its opening in one year there were 120,000 visitors, invested 20 million in seven years and created 150 permanent jobs.

The Farm has redesigned the face of the town that from a place to escape from, has turned into an attractor of energies and talents, where young people stay to try to create a possible future; new economic activities were born, job opportunities created. But there is more, because the Farm, which includes among other things an architecture school for the little ones, exhibition spaces and residences for artists, is not just a place for the production, experimentation and enjoyment of Culture, aims to create a new sense of community and with the recovery of the entire historic center to transform the country into a tourist destination to become the second attraction of the province of Agrigento, after the Valley of the Temples.

What prompted Bartoli to invest in this community was the desire to stay in our community and feel good. At first they were considered “aliens”, there was mistrust, then there were the first findings. The idea was to make ideas and skills available to demonstrate that it can be done with art and culture.

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2.4 Young people for the future of the village Borgo Vaccarizzo, Vaccarizzo (CS), Italy Keywords: value, interest, future

Vaccarizzo di Montalto Uffugo, between the Crati Valley and the Paolana coastal chain, in the province of Cosenza, was at risk of depopulation. Not a village, just a fraction, a small, almost uninhabited nucleus: empty houses, closed schools, no buses and no services, not even the post office, for the 500 remaining residents. Many of them planned to emigrate. It was thought it would become a ghost town until MIT in Boston wanted to make it a prototype of social regeneration: Vaccarizzo di Montalto Uffugo, an invisible dot on any geographical map, is part of a great international initiative on social transformation, within the first Societal Transformation Lab of the Presencing Institute, a research platform for the profound transformation of social, economic and cultural systems.

The idea on the repopulation of marginal areas starts from Brit, a start-up engaged in the regeneration of villages and historic houses at risk of abandonment: considered the indicators for the choice of territories, Vaccarizzo is in the lead among ten Italian locations, for the

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historical value of territory, attractive resources, the availability of the local community.

There are no monuments, masterpieces of ancient or contemporary architecture, valuable artistic assets, botanical gardens. But there is an ancient spinning mill, recovered and transformed into a museum, with balls of silk and broom in the baskets, and the wooden choir of the church of San Rocco with busts of bare-breasted women sculpted like caryatids. An agglomeration of rural houses, chestnut woods, vineyards and vegetable gardens as far as the eye can see and free flocks grazing.

In an ancient home, that of the Chimenti family, which owns the spinning mill, the traditions of the past come to life, especially in the kitchen: housewives parade “mmaccaruni” from willow twigs with a few skilful gestures. Visitors follow the preparation spellbound. Even at Franca’s home you can taste local recipes and typical products: her has in fact been a homerestaurant for more than 40 years, since home restaurants did not even exist. A beekeeper produces delicious honey, complete with national certificates. Among the tables in the bar, the square relives. For those arriving from outside, there is always a party ready: in winter, in the cellars, around the braziers of the past, stories are told.

Thus was born “I live in Vaccarizzo”. The experimentation follows all the steps of Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, director of the Presencing Institute, change management expert and lecturer at MIT in Boston at the Management Sloan School. We start from an assumption: that “for the future we are required to draw from a deeper level of our humanity”.

In the abandoned school the workshops begin. Four meetings in connection with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to analyze the condition of the village and identify solutions for its repopulation.

Almost the entire community participates: among the first to join the Association for the recovery of the traditions of Vaccarizzo.

After the delivery to MIT of the reports on the completed experimentation, the people of Vaccarizzo did not want to stop: they expressed the desire to put into practice what emerged during the workshops. With the support of Legacoop, he created a community cooperative (60 members), elected Roberta Caruso as president (with online voting) and started a crowdfunding for the opening of a “putiga”, a bulk food store, products from land in particular, at km 0. The company has been given shape: it will open a shop together with the first pub in the town. Young people rethink their future in the village.

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2.5 New inhabitants, future bearers of the heritage Riace (RC), Italy Keywords: identity, renewal

Vaccarizzo di Montalto Uffugo, between the Crati Valley and the Paolana coastal chain, in the province of Cosenza, was at risk of depopulation. Not a village, just a fraction, a small, almost uninhabited nucleus: empty houses, closed sc According to Domenico Lucano, mayor, the 1998 landing had a profound significance for the Calabrian village, located in the southern area of ​​the Ionian coast. Up to that moment Riace had known only the outgoing migratory flows, with the villagers abandoning their role as laborers to go to work in the industries of the north.

The houses were empty and the local economy paralyzed, thus the association “Città Futura” was created and a council formed to transform Riace into the city of hospitality. The dream was to create a town based on the same values as ​​ the local culture, untouched by capitalism and consumerism. A culture of hospitality, which always finds a way and space to welcome foreigners.

Of the approximately 1800 current inhabitants of Riace, as many as 400 are foreigners, many of whom have found a home and work

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thanks to a funding program of the Italian government that has lasted for ten years. For each migrant, the administration receives 30 euros a day, which is used to provide them with a home, money to spend and for someone, a job. To ensure that the money is not lost, but that it remains within the village community, migrants are not given money, but bonuses of different value that are accepted only in Riace. In this way the town’s anesthetized economy is slowly starting to turn around again.

Most of the migrants have integrated well in Riace. There are those who act as translators and cultural mediators, those who take care of the flowers and plants of the historic center, those who do separate collection with a cart pulled by a donkey, those who are restoring an abandoned valley to make it a breeding for animals and who takes care of the cleaning of the Riace marina beach. No one among the elderly has ever had any problems with these people from the South of the world, although there are those who worry that one day their number could exceed that of the local people and do not look favorably on this possibility. But there are also those who, thanks to migrants, have found work arms that were no longer available among the local population, such as Luigi Santa Croce, a 70-year-old man, who every year calls two or three African boys to help him in the olive harvest its hundred plants.

To those who reply that the reception project has disadvantaged tourism, the mayor replies that on the contrary the project hools, no buses and no services, not even the post office, for the 500 remaining residents. Many of them planned to emigrate. It was thought it would become a ghost town until MIT in Boston wanted to make it a prototype of social regeneration: Vaccarizzo di Montalto Uffugo, an invisible dot on any geographical map, is part of a great international initiative on social transformation, within the first Societal Transformation Lab of the Presencing Institute, a research platform for the profound transformation of social, economic and cultural systems.

The idea on the repopulation of marginal areas starts from Brit, a start-up engaged in the regeneration of villages and historic houses at risk of abandonment: considered the indicators for the choice of territories, Vaccarizzo is in the lead among ten Italian locations, for the historical value of territory, attractive resources, the availability of the local community.

There are no monuments, masterpieces of ancient or contemporary architecture, valuable artistic assets, botanical gardens. But there is an ancient spinning mill, recovered and transformed into a museum, with balls of silk and broom in the baskets, and the wooden choir of

33

the church of San Rocco with busts of bare-breasted women sculpted like caryatids. An agglomeration of rural houses, chestnut woods, vineyards and vegetable gardens as far as the eye can see and free flocks grazing.

In an ancient home, that of the Chimenti family, which owns the spinning mill, the traditions of the past come to life, especially in the kitchen: housewives parade “mmaccaruni” from willow twigs with a few skilful gestures. Visitors follow the preparation spellbound. Even at Franca’s home you can taste local recipes and typical products: her has in fact been a homerestaurant for more than 40 years, since home restaurants did not even exist. A beekeeper produces delicious honey, complete with national certificates. Among the tables in the bar, the square relives. For those arriving from outside, there is always a party ready: in winter, in the cellars, around the braziers of the past, stories are told.

Thus was born “I live in Vaccarizzo”. The experimentation follows all the steps of Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, director of the Presencing Institute, change management expert and lecturer at MIT in Boston at the Management Sloan School. We start from an assumption: that “for the future we are required to draw from a deeper level of our humanity”.

In the abandoned school the workshops begin. Four meetings in connection with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to analyze the condition of the village and identify solutions for its repopulation.

Almost the entire community participates: among the first to join the Association for the recovery of the traditions of Vaccarizzo.

After the delivery to MIT of the reports on the completed experimentation, the people of Vaccarizzo did not want to stop: they expressed the desire to put into practice what emerged during the workshops. With the support of Legacoop, he created a community cooperative (60 members), elected Roberta Caruso as president (with online voting) and started a crowdfunding for the opening of a “putiga”, a bulk food store, products from land in particular, at km 0. The company has been given shape: it will open a shop together with the first pub in the town. Young people rethink their future in the village.

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2.6 Tourism as a resource for conservation Sextantio Diffuso Hotel, Santo Stefano di Sessanio (AQ), Italy Keywords: heritage

Santo Stefano di Sessanio is a fortified medieval village built in the mountains of Abruzzo at over 1250 meters above sea level, within the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park. The current urban configuration of the village was established in the Middle Ages when the phenomenon of fortification developed. The integrity between the territory and the historical building has been residually preserved in some villages set in the Apennine mountains precisely because of their depopulation, in the more general context of impoverishment of the south, abandonment of the mountain and emigration of its people.

The Santo Stefano di Sessanio restoration project has introduced new procedures to preserve the integrity of this historic village and the surrounding landscape through specific agreements with local authorities (Municipality / National Park). The ultimate goal is that, at least in this case, the tourist re-destination does not inevitably lead to the loss of territorial identities. The project in its private part

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provides for the conservation of the intended use of the original domestic organization, the concealment of systems and technology, the exclusive use of recycled architectural material, the use of poor furnishings from the Abruzzo mountains. This approach of protection goes as far as the conservation of those traces of experience, and of poor living, sedimented in the plasters and in the stratifications of the built, to preserve the most deep and authentic of these places.

The idea is by Daniele E. Kihlgren, a Milanese of Swedish origin, founder and CEO of Sextantio Group. Belonging to a family of cement entrepreneurs, at the end of the nineties he decided to restore the medieval village in ruins, to make the whole town a widespread hotel.

This is a private project for the conservation of cultural heritage carried out without public intervention. Subsequently, he will carry out a similar project at the Sassi of Matera.

Fundamental to Sextantio is protecting the historic relationship between an ancient hill town and its surrounding countryside. Historic hill towns are an essential part of the landscape of appennines.

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2.7 Network for preserve Borghi Sostenibili del Piemonte, Piemonte, Italy Keywords: network, sustainability

There are 12 and they are scattered around Piedmont. They reflect different traditions and architectures of distant origins, they are all perfectly preserved. These are the 12 villages that have been part of the Sustainable Villages of Piedmont network for a year. Together, however, they are part of a sustainable tourism project, promoted by the Tourism Department in collaboration with the EnviPark science park, which aims to enhance the richness of these places, shifting the focus from being simple well-preserved villages to to be points of excellence for tourism policies that enhance good environmental practices and the defense of the territory’s identity.

The project was born by the will of the Piedmont Region, which has chosen Environment Park, a scientific and technological park for the environment, as a support for the development of the project and as an expert on issues related to sustainability and good energyenvironmental practices.

The project is part of the strategies of the Piedmont Region aimed at promoting sustainable tourist resorts and destinations, enhancing and rewarding the initiatives in the field of environmental protection and responsible tourism undertaken by the municipalities of the area.

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The offer made available by the 12 villages - but each of them has unique peculiarities - ranges from the possibility of hiking in the natural parks, visiting the artisan shops of the historic centers, sighting the dozens of species of animals present in the reserves, following the paths cycle paths indicated by local guides. Visit the Ecomuseums to discover ancient practices, the old dryers and chestnut groves, take didactic walks. And then stop in taverns where the sense of food and wine finds its meaning in wines, cheeses and local products.

The “Sustainable Villages” brand is one of the tools with which the Piedmont Region intends to promote and qualify the tourism offer.

Within the website, in addition to the rich set of information and links to tourist attractions, you will find all the information on good environmental tourism practices that are implemented in the area.

From plants for the production of energy from renewable sources to environmental and landscape redevelopment projects, from green building structures to the decalogue of sustainable tourists. The portal is also a place for discussion between industry professionals and citizens, which is used to investigate technical and environmental topics with a view to an ever-greater development of sustainability.

The municipalities that are currently part of the network are located throughout the Piedmont area. A complex of realities that presents itself to the outside as a “host community”. This is a new form of hospitality that provides for the attribution to the tourist or visitor of a sort of “temporary citizenship”. A privileged channel to access the most intimate life of the community that involves a commitment to know and respect its historical and environmental identity.

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2.8 Environmental network Green Ecovillage Network, Torri Superiore, (IM), Italy Keywords: network, EU, community

The Green Ecovillage Network is a growing network of sustainable communities and initiatives that unite different cultures and countries, the main objective is to support and encourage the evolution of sustainable settlements in the world through exchanges of knowledge, information and practices. The ecovillage is an urban or rural community that strives to integrate a social support environment with a low environmental impact lifestyle. In recent years, the members of the “Green Ecovillage Network” have been promoting ecovillage tourism, a new type of travel green where the tourist experiences a community life in suggestive natural environments where ecological buildings become the setting for a stay with low environmental impact.

The medieval villages in Europe for the original construction techniques, for their landscape insertion and for the increasingly careful, targeted and responsible restoration techniques are easily suited to fall within the values ​​of international ecovillages. There are

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currently 220 ecovillages between North and South America, 214 in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, 64 in Oceania and the Far East.

In Italy there is the RIVE12 network which adheres to the philosophy of the “Green Ecovillage Network” and deals exclusively with the Italian reality, it is an association made up of communities, ecovillages, community projects and individuals interested in making known and supporting community experiences .

Different experiences from one another in philosophical and organizational orientation belong to the Italian network of ecovillages, but all in any case inspired by a sustainable model of life from an ecological, socio-cultural and economic point of view.

It is interesting to note that on their website it is possible to consult online the mapping not only of the associated eco-villages, but also of the commercial structures that follow their philosophy.

An example is Torri Superiore in Liguria.

Torri Superiore in the Eighties was completely uninhabited, with the exception of a loner, Nando Beltrame, who was the only resident. The peculiarity of Torri Superiore is the complete adherence to the initial rural project, in fact its constructive and structural characteristics

41

have remained intact over time. The origin of the medieval settlement in Torri Superiore, which looks like a complex of buildings separated a few hundred meters from the main village, is uncertain; it is believed that it can date back to the late 13th century and its stronghold structure would confirm the thesis of its military origin.

The depopulation, which took place as early as the nineteenth century and ended after the war, is mainly due to the lack of work, but a determining factor was also the geographical location that has seen a continuous change of border between Italy and France for more than a century.

The intervention began in 1983 from the initial will of a couple from Turin, who were fascinated by it as soon as they arrived in Torri Superiore and in 1989 they committed themselves, considering the extent of the intervention, to establish the Cultural Association of Torri Superiore. Through the statute it is easy to identify the philosophy of the intervention: among the aims of the association it is of primary importance to give life to a community based on harmony and respect for people, nature and the environment, overcoming all types of dogma and preconceived ideology. So a company-based intervention.

To ensure that the place does not become a place to stay for only a few months a year, the association is committed to promoting collective and individual economic activities that provide for the livelihood of the inhabitants, allowing permanent settlement in Torri.

The ambitious project was therefore to completely restore the ancient village and insert a community within it that shared its original thrust.

This strong link with nature has characterized the philosophy of the intervention not only from the point of view of enhancement, but also as regards the recovery, in fact Torri Superiore has been entirely recovered following the principles of bio-architecture, in fact in the statute it is highlighted that the the association is committed to promoting and implementing the recovery and revitalization, protecting and enhancing its original architectural and urban characteristics obviously following the environmental and naturalistic criteria on which the “community” is founded.

The “Torri Superiore” Cultural Association is not for profit and aims all its energies, both economic and operational, for the revitalization of the medieval village and the activities related to it.

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03

Baronia Case

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3.1 Internal Areas: Abruzzo

> 5001 population 5001 - 500 population

Img. 8 - Abruzzo Municipalities

< 500 population

Abruzzo is full of municipalities that are a part of the so-called Internal Areas, which we have already mentioned before.

They include more mountainous municipalities, are sparsely populated areas but they have great development resources.

Since the 50s of the last century, the settlement transformations have changed the distribution of the population on the territory of Abruzzo.

The territorial fabric has been fragmented into small units, most of which have less than 5000 inhabitants (Img. 8) Regarding the settlement level, there is an inequality between coastal and internal municipalities. As shown in the map, over the years migratory movements have impoverished the demographic fabric of Abruzzo. During the 70’s there has been a population growth that has

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affected more coastal municipalities and those located in the valleys, or those realities placed along the main axes of connection.

L’Aquila, being an internal province of Abruzzo has suffered a greater depopulation than other areas and present most of the municipalities with a population of less than 5000 inhabitants.

From the demographic point of view, the demographic aging of the population is a fact that affects the whole of Italy and involves consequences on several levels, in particular the economic one. The areas most affected are, once again, the internal mountainous areas where depopulation has hindered development.

The internal areas of Abruzzo, in fact, since they have remained underdeveloped in terms of production, are unable to attract new populations.

3.1.1 Demographic trends During the 50s and 60s in Abruzzo, the demographic trend has had very positive balances thanks to high birth rates (Img 9). This trend began to decrease from the second half of the 60s onwards, from the 70s, in fact, there are the first signals of reduction in birth rate in Abruzzo. These first symptoms of birth reduction are due to the cultural and economic transformation that would have led Abruzzo to

Img. 9 - Abruzzo Region (istat.it)

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zero growth results.

The demographic curve of the province of L’Aquila, formed by exclusively mountainous municipalities, reflects the peculiar problems of this environment.

In the period between 1861 and 1911 (Img. 10) there was a significant demographic growth that reached its historical maximum.

While in the period between 1911 and 1951 we find ourselves faced with a limited decrease, this was the result of the combined effect of the decrease in the birth rate, emigration (controlled by fascist laws) and incidental events such as the world wars.

Between 1951 and 1971, also due to the reduction of restrictions on expatriation, the demographic fall was no longer contained.

In fact, emigration exceeded the natural balance and caused a substantial demographic decline.

This demographic decline reveals the role of economic marginality of the mountain areas compared to the coastal and hilly areas, endowed with greater wealth and opportunities.

In the period between 1971 and 2001, the rate of decrease is stabilized on values close to zero, this reassuring data is however anomalous compared to the trends of the mountain populations, which instead continue to register a strong decrease. In the last years, the little increase of the population is due to the phenomenon of urbanization and to the attraction exercised by the industrial poles.

Img. 10 - Provincia L’Aquila (istat.it)

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3.2. Baronia di Carapelle

Via degli Abruzzi XIII-XV sec.

Firenze-Napoli Baronia di Carapelle 1271-1806

Traturro Magno VII sec L’Aquila-Foggia

Diocesi of Sulmona-Valva District of L’Aquila 1806-1860

Img. 11 - Historical map

The so-called Baronia of Carapelle is an area that includes the municipalities of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Carapelle Calvisio, Castelvecchio Calvisio, Calascio, Castel del Monte and Villa Santa Lucia degli Abruzzi, these towns are located in the south-eastern area of Gran Sasso and they were all built between the XII and XIII century.

The municipalities of this area are marked by a strong historical identity that has had in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance its maximum splendor. Unfortunately, due to the demographic decline, that began with the two World Wars, their territorial, cultural and social identities have become increasingly weak.

The decrease in population and the high index of ageing have caused a reduction in economic activities, in particular agricultural ones.

In these places the relationship between man and the environment is still close and it has been unchanged for thousands of years, based on the use of the resources of the land, sheep farming and agriculture.

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3.2.1 The history

The Baronia of Carapelle (Img. 11) was formed and developed between the XII and the XIII century. With the fall of the Roman Empire there is a progressive decay of the settlement and social system, which only the monastic orders will be able to recover later.

In fact, with the increase of the cultivated lands, as a result of the work of the monastic orders, there is a repopulation of the countryside, even in the mountains. There is therefore the birth and the consolidation of fortified villages, safe since they are positioned at high altitudes. The process of fortification begins with the Norman conquest of Abruzzo in 1140. This event takes on particular importance for the internal mountain areas of the region because from this moment the activity of transhumance takes place, that is a seasonal migration of flocks and shepherds who move from mountain pastures and hills (in summer) to the ones of the plains (in winter) along the natural ways of sheep tracks, with the possibility of Abruzzo to exploit in winter periods the pastures of Puglia.

The fortification is favored by the unification of southern Italy under the Normans and by the necessity of defense against new invasions.

From this was born the idea to create a defensive system centered on the fortifications of Carapelle, Castelvecchio Calvisio, Calascio and Castel del Monte to have a mutual surveillance.

In 1271 Carlo d’Angiò assigned the Baronia to one of his most loyal men, Matteo del Plessiaco.

The Baronia had to suffer the plague in 1348. In 1435 the feud, including the Baronia di Carapelle, was ceded to the Piccolomini. The last descendant of these then sold the feud to Francesco de Medici.

The extensive pastures of this area became useful to the grand dukes of Tuscany for their cattle industry.

This was one of the periods of major splendor because with the “Tratturi” and “Tratturelli” the flocks were led to Puglia and then exported to Firenze where the wool was treated and refined and finally sent to the European courts.

The commercial traffic took place on the Via degli Abruzzi, which became a fundamental axis for the commerce of the time and connected L’Aquila and its province with Napoli to the south and Firenze to the north.

The Medici governed the Barony until 1743, the year in which it became part of the Regno delle due Sicilie with Carlo III di Borbone.

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The abolishment of the feuds and the French administrative reform signed the end of the Baronia whose territory was divided among the countries that were part of it and they followed the events of the Regno di Napoli until the Unification of Italy.

Img. 12 - Topographic map of S. Stefano, Carapelle, Castelvecchio Caraspelle, Rocca Calascio, Calascio municipalities (Archivio di Stato dell’Aquila, Atti demaniali, 1809)

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Norman conquest

by Ruggero D’Altavilla Resumes transhumance activities Plague

1140

1348 1271

1435 year: 1349 epicenter: Appennino magnitude: 6.6

year: 1461 epicenter: L’Aquila magnitude: 6.5

year: 1316 epicenter: Sulmona magnitude: 6.0

Carlo D’Angiò

Piccolomini dominion

Francesco de Medici Granducato di Toscana Period of maximum splendor thanks to Via degli Abruzzi Feudal subversion year: 1703 epicenter: Centro Italia magnitude: 6.7

year: 2009 epicenter: L’Aquila magnitude: 6.2

year: 1706 epicenter: Maiella magnitude: 6.6

1579

1806 1743 year: 1915 epicenter: Marsica Avezzano magnitude: 7.0

year: 1950 epicenter: Monti della Laga magnitude: 5.2

Regno delle due Sicilie Carlo III di Borbone

3.2.2 The historical routes

L’Aquila

Img. 13 - “Tratturi” and “Tratturelli” map

The practice of transhumance was a source of economic richness for the mountainous territories of Abruzzo until the middle of the XX century and marked the birth of commercial towns along the route of the sheep tracks.

The main route in southern Italy was the “Tratturo Magno” which started in Aquila. The territory of the Baronia di Carapelle is tangent to the first branch of the “Tratturo Magno” and the flocks reached it from the pastures of Campo Imperatore (Img. 13).

Abruzzo region has always played an important role as a link between north and south Italy. The Norman period in addition to reopen the ways of transhumance also determined the improvement of defensive structures such as towers and castles necessary to safeguard commerce and placed in defense of roads and paths of transhumance. Always under this domination, Abruzzo witnessed a substantial reuse of Roman roads, with partial abandonment and necessary transformations. The phenomenon of the birth of new

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inhabited centers placed in elevated positions for reasons of defense gave new impulses to the process of requalification of the viability, formed mostly by paths used by transhumance. It was formed so a dense network of secondary roads able to overcome unevenness and connected to the great arteries made in Roman and late ancient age.

The original routes of these secondary routes were strengthened or abandoned over time. The network increasingly adapted to the particular morphology of these places.

The great east-west connecting axes between the different areas of the region remained unchanged over the centuries while the northsouth axis was consolidated in the via degli Abruzzi, which connected Napoli to Firenze passing through L’Aquila.(Img 14) Firenze

Arezzo

Perugia

Spoleto

L’Aquila

Sulmona

Napoli Img. 14 - “Via degli Abruzzi”

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Img. 15 - Baronia demographic trend (istat.it)

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Castelvecchio Calvisio D i s t r e t t i d e l l a B a r o n i a: censimento 1861-2019

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The Baronia di Carapelle has scarcely populated municipalities. The various villages that compose it have a very similar demographic behavior. As clearly visible in the graphs reported, there is a slow growth until 1921, then the population begins to decrease after the First World War and similarly after the part D i Second s t r e t t i World d e l l aWar. B a rAolarge n i a: censimento 1861-201 of the population begins to emigrate to other parts of Italy or to other countries, due to the lack of work.

The strong demographic decrease of these municipalities has contributed to the maintenance of the original structure of the settlement, contrary to more populated municipalities such as Castel del Monte, which instead has experienced significant transformations and new constructions. (Img. 15) 1861

3.2.3 Depopulation

Santo Stefano

Carapelle Cal

3.3 2009 Seismic Event The Baronia di Carapelle villages have suffered from all the earthquakes from ‘300 to ‘700 with damage and destruction in all municipalities of the area, as evidenced by the changes in building types and in particular by the facades not coherent with the architectural elements.

The damages caused by the seismic event of April 2009 have been common in all the countries of Baronia and have affected the historical building fabric and not.

The greatest damage to public and monumental buildings has occurred in the municipality of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, where the Medicean Tower, symbol of the town, has completely collapsed (Img. 16).

The most damaged village was Castelvecchio Calvisio, where half of the buildings were declared uninhabitable, while in the other municipalities this percentage was lower.

The macro seismic survey of the 2009 event conducted by the QUEST teams (Quick Earthquake Survey Team) assigned a value of 6.5 to Santo Stefano di Sessanio and 6 to Castel del Monte, Castelvecchio Calvisio and Villa Santa Lucia degli Abruzzi.

Img. 16 - Medicean Tower, before/after the seismic event

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3.4 Castelvecchio Calvisio It is a village part of the Baronia district, it is located 35 km from L’Aquila.

In the VII century there are reports of four churches that rose between Castelvecchio and Carapelle, in fact in the valley there are the ruins of early medieval buildings belonging to four small villages prior to the time of the fortification.

The history of Castelvecchio Calvisio follows the one of the Baronia di Carapelle and it’s characterized by the alternation of different feudatories who controlled the village.

In 1566 the feud of the Baronia is sold by Costanza Piccolomini and acquired by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The Medici maintained control for two centuries until 1743 when it passed to the Regno delle due Sicilie under the Borboni.

The urban texture is very unique. The outer perimeter of the historic center is elliptical in shape and is fortified by house walls. The village was accessed through 4 defended gates (Img. 17). To the west is located the Porta di Torre Maggiore, to the northwest the Porta Palazzo del Capitano, to the south two doors, one called Porta San Martino.

Img. 17 - City plan of Castelvecchio Calvisio

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The recurring building typology for the whole village is constituted by the simple or double row, but the main characteristic is represented by the external access stairs to all the houses (Img. 18). The staircases are characterized by steps with a riser larger than the tread in order to reach high altitudes in the smallest possible space. In most cases the stairs run parallel to the houses.

Outside the village, in the 18th century, rural buildings, barns and stables were built, which lost the planimetric organization of the village and leaned parallel to the contour lines.

Img. 18 - Typical Staircase

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Survey

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4.1 Carapelle Calvisio

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View of Castelvecchio Calvisio from Carapelle

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4.2 Calascio

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Rocca di Calascio

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View of Campo Imperatore

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4.3 Santo Stefano di Sessanio

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4.4 Castelvecchio Calvisio

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Giuseppe 35 years old bar owner, restaurateur, landlord.

I: What is your occupation?

G: I am mainly a public employee, and then I started this business to try to give life to the town! So I do a little bit of various activities.

I: Are you from Castelvecchio?

G: Caporciano near Navelli but now I live here!

I: How did you get here?

G: Because I’m a bus driver, and I made a replacement and then I moved here.

I: Do you feel part of the life of Castelvecchio?

G: Honestly, no... unfortunately there are still some old dynamics that persist in time... In addition, the population is small, young people are few... to be involved you must adapt to certain dynamics that you do not share. I do not share the vision of the administration.

I: Do you have a place of the heart here in Castelvecchio or surroundings?

And if you can explain why.

G: For me Castelvecchio is a bit of a heart place! You live well... for the landscape... people... you live in a quiet way.

I: When you’re not working, how do you spend your free time?

G: I have no time, I’ve to split myself into two activities! I work three days at the city hall and the days I do not work at the city hall work here!(bar) And then there’s always something to think about.

I: Do you move from Castelvecchio by car or do you use public transportation?

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G: Only by car, and that’s a good question because one of the things we should be fighting about is transportation and connections to different countries that would be fundamental.

I: In fact, we were also wondering about the old people, not everyone drives...

How do they move?

G: Yes, this is the critical point of the territory!

I: So it would be more important for you to connect Castelvecchio and the various villages, rather than Castelvecchio and L’Aquila.

G: Once you have connected the villages of the area to San Pio delle Camere, which is a large centre, from there you are connected to L’Aquila, to Pescara...

I: How do you see your future in Castelvecchio?

G: I see the future as positive... in the country you live well... tourism seems to be interested...

I: In fact, we have also heard from other people that this summer there was much more tourists, since we did not move abroad.

G: Yes, expectations are coming true, also because the alternative was to get away from here... but expectations are good now! respond and go to challenge the business plan... The business plan of Castelvecchio is sustainable because there are people who also engage with volunteering for support an economic activity in Castelvecchio! If we think only of the economic return does not work... if there begins to be a development the speech changes! So those who administer us do not know the reality of our places. You have to live there to understand them.

I: Can you tell us some strengths and weaknesses of Castelvecchio?

G: A strength is connect to the life that you live here, and that is still one of the few countries where you can live a daily life, with a meeting point... even the morphology of the country leads you to live a collected lifestyle… everything is near, get out you have the minimarket, the post office, the bar, the municipality.

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I: And don’t you miss a public space, an equipped square, a physical meeting point?

G: Certainly yes, there are some outdoor spaces, maybe an indoor space since summer is short here, able to accommodate a few people and maybe do winter events is necessary!

I: How do you see the presence of tourists in Castelvecchio?

G: That was good! They bring at least new ideas and new perspectives, new ways of living the village and go to break down the “mental walls” that still exist in these countries. The locals are blind, they bring a change.

I: Do you have any suggestions on how to enhance the country or the territory?

G: I am fighting for sustainable mobility, to enhance the village, because basically there is almost everything but there are no connections and today you can only think of sustainable mobility as a project to enhance the village and the territory.

You have to start from there, and once there are services the repopulation comes automatically. Today we have to have two or three cars for any need... but if there are functional and efficient connections there is a saving of money.

I: So it is not so much a problem of road quality as the lack of public transport!

G: And organization! Those who administer us are not good, do not know the reality in which we live because they are administered by Rome, L’Aquila, ... without knowing our reality. It is not possible to administer it.

I had an experience with INVITALIA, you make requests for funding, they make calls, we respond and go to challenge the business plan... The business plan of Castelvecchio is sustainable because there are people who also engage with volunteering for support an economic activity in Castelvecchio! If we think only of the economic return does not work... if there begins to be a development the speech changes! So those who administer us do not know the reality of our places. You have to live there to understand them.

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San Giovanni Battista church

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Luigina 67 years old the mayor of Castelvecchio Calvisio

I:Do you have a particular memory of Castelvecchio?

L: A memory I have imprinted in my mind is the harvesting of wheat! The time of unwrapping, we even have some folk songs that we sing in our choir to pass on! We separated the cobs from the stalk and unwrapping meant removing the leaves from the corn, and that too was a time for us to celebrate and dance!

We would go from house to house and then our reward was to dance, first you worked and then you had fun. There were many moments of community, for example when we wanted to warm up in the winter. At my grandmother’s house there were always a lot of people because the oven was underneath and so it was a warm room. And we knitted, crocheted, fixed umbrellas, made baskets with olive branches, ... during the day when it was very cold and there was snow, we used to go to the stables where there were animals and even there we had parties! And among children and the elderly we shared habits and memories.

However, I have very fond memories of my childhood in Castelvecchio.

I: Was there more community at that time?

L: Yes! Now everyone thinks for himself... at that time many went to France, America... because here there was food but no money!

I:Have you found participation from Castelvecchio residents during these years?

L: Yes, but unfortunately the inhabitants of Castelvecchio have a defect, that they get bored! On a social level, we have set up a choir, which is still going strong, and there are still some youngsters, but now there is only one left in a group of 12.

I: So in your opinion is there participation or not?

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L: There isn’t, or at least for previous periods,... things have changed. Also because those who were involved in social work were the oldest! The young people of that time... I cannot involve the young people! Maybe if someone from outside comes, it’s better!

In 2009 we came into contact with the earthquake and the worst of the citizens came out. I don’t say this to discredit them, I adore them, but consider that they fought over the tents! They didn’t experience the earthquake directly, it came as a glimpse. It was fear above all. It was the moment when they had to associate themselves and they weren’t able to. They are all a bit more superb.

More selfish.

I: There is no interest. And do you think bringing in tourists is good, and what kind of tourism would you prefer. Do you have any suggestions?

L: Absolutely, that’s our future in my opinion! In fact, we are working on a Baronia trail that will encompass Castel del Monte, Santa Lucia, Ofena and Capestrano. We’re also working with the PITs on a project that connects these towns and gives us money to enhance each one’s territory. I decided to enhance the mountain, so a fairy tale path where you tell fairy tales of the forest to children in a structure with islands with services. Then more on a workshop, I bought a house, where schools can come. Something that lasts all year long. With the path you get to the paths of the Italic and even higher up there is a valley that is now not accessible but it is beautiful and I would like to make an outdoor theater, a labyrinth that takes the plan of Castelvecchio, and above still there is a shelter that I’m trying to fix where I thought to make a cooking workshop so at the end of the path you find a restaurant, not real but where you prepare food! They complained about me going to invest in the mountain, not knowing what I had in mind. It is an hour’s walk away. And we have the “adonis vernalis” which is a flower that was extinct instead the WWF rediscovered it, it is a medicinal plant.

However I am pro-tourism, even this year when there were more people I always help the merchants even if they don’t always understand. Nothing comes to me in what I organize here, I want to leave something for the country.

However, a tourism that is not mass, that likes the tranquility, I would like people who come here to be able to enjoy the landscape, the walks ... it is in fact in the program and will start a project that connects Castelvecchio with Carapelle with a bike path where we rebuild the old road ... I aspire to something like that, my house here I have already made it become a room rental.

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Matteo, Giulia and Federico 32, 29, 28 years old association viviamolaq

I: We’d like to know something about you and what you do as association.

F: We are part of the association Viviamolaq that operates on L’Aquila since 2012 and the initial thrust comes from a lack of places of aggregation that the citizens of L’Aquila have found after the earthquake in 2009. Our first project in fact started not from the architectural project, but from a series of interviews that were done to the inhabitants of M.A.P. in particular of the hamlet of Santa Rufina that is located near the city.

During the years, changing the needs of the citizens of L’Aquila also our projects have changed, and if in the first years we focused on the recovery and redevelopment of spaces that after the earthquake had lost their identity, or were abandoned, we expanded our skills and our interests on interventions that were not fixed but itinerant that went to reactivate the brushes within the historic center with educational walks along with other associations and experts. Lately we have left the reality of L’Aquila with workshops for two years with institutes of Ortona always on issues related to architecture.

More recently we started a collaboration with an organization based in Copenhagen called EAHR (Emergency Architecture & Human Rights) and with the figure of Andrea Maggiolo we organized 3 workshops, one at L’Aquila in the historic centre and the other two as a theme Castelvecchio Calvisio.

The first in the 5x5 format in which the participants received the input that the earthquake had happened the day before the start of the workshop, and then they tried to set up a project of physical and immaterial recovery by establishing 3 temporal stages in a design form. The last workshop that took place at the end of September/early October was in the 1+1 format where the participants realized small wooden structures that could be realized for different purposes,

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establishing a very close relationship with the community trying to make both “community engagement” and also the realization of these elements of urban furniture used during the final event where different realities intervened such as: manufacturing, agro-food, dance schools, music groups, visual arts and also the association OFFSITEART that has been operating in the territory of L’Aquila for about four years and has contributed to the social reconstruction of the city thanks to art, going to cover the scaffolding of the yards with works of artists from L’Aquila and not, in such a way as to convey a message of hope, rebirth and promotion of the territory.

I: Why did you choose Castelvecchio?

F: The actions on Castelvecchio were born from the fact that, visiting the village we realized that the physical reconstruction had not been started yet, in fact just a couple of yards are active, and that the old town is completely uninhabited and said because the state of conservation of the buildings, even before the earthquake, was what we can see. We thought that reactivating the village both with physical reconstruction interventions and with community engagement interventions to understand their needs and understand what future they imagine for their country was a challenge to be met.

I: What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of Castelvecchio?

G: As Federico said, Castelvecchio, it is “very challenging”, because it is in the condition of many other villages but taken to the extreme. So, it’s most abandoned but beautiful, most dispersed but with an immense naturalistic value around, that is the strengths of the architectural, historical and natural heritage from the Gran Sasso mountains. But the weaknesses are very heavy, the abandonment of Castelvecchio is perhaps irreversible, so it is necessary to reinvent.

F: At the same time we need an external vision that takes into account the needs, and that’s what we tried to do. Because although there are few people that inhabit the village, it’s in particular thanks to interviews that we have noticed the opening ideas to new residents, not in an intensive way as happened in Santo Stefano di Sessanio. Because in that case they see an intervention without taking into account the social aspect and the fabric of the village.

I: What conclusions did you draw from your workshops?

F: Good question! The residents told us to come back again, so we perceived a great desire to receive and to tell what has been Castelvecchio and what is.

Regard the administrative side there is a great availability, this is demonstrated by the fact that there are many academic and even non-Italian realities that are interested in Castelvecchio.

M: Yes, there is an American school that has been doing a summer school there.

G: There is also a great difficulty in doing things in Castelvecchio! People want to do things, but maybe they do not have the ability to make things happen.

There is little support. Even for us the event was difficult, in Castelvecchio you

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must think about everything, even the easiest things. Logistically it’s difficult.

M: Everything becomes more difficult, we arrived in thirty people, like aliens, they given us a space that was given to the young people of the municipality to do gym. In short, it becomes difficult to make people understand the good intentions of those who are doing something for them from the outside. So there are many possibilities, combined with many difficulties.

I: Have you ever thought about creating a network that connect Castelvecchio and the neighbouring countries? Or activities in the other countries of Baronia.

F: I want to say that there is a potential, enormous, but it needs, as it happens in many of the internal Italian areas, to be activated, through someone who has in mind a design for these territories. Instead of creating a dust of nodes, they should create a network as dense as possible of realities that are put in place between them.

I: What is your opinion about infrastructure, such as roads and connections...

M: From L’Aquila to Castelvecchio there is a road, very direct, then the roads that connect the various villages.

F: Even in pretty good conditions! Ok maybe pieces in which there is no horizontal signs, plants that invade roads, there’s a bit of maintenance missing, that’s all.

F: The recent news is that this summer due to Covid they had a peak of residential and gastronomic tourism.

G: I also launch the theme of passion for the abandoned place. The tourism of the decadent villages, there are many people who go to photograph Castelvecchio because it is so: decadent.

M: In my opinion Castelvecchio alone is not ready for these new dynamics of tourism etc... but together with the others there would be good possibility.

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Workshop 5x5 Castelvecchio Calvisio, L’Aquila

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Lucia 59 years old owner of trattoria le 4 ville

I: How is the life in Castelvecchio? Do you feel involved in Castelvecchio’s life?

L: Yes, even if relatively. Doing this job, I stay closed here in the restaurant for many hours, I am not fully living the social life of Castelvecchio. But in the end in the morning I go to the grocery store, the post office, etc... so I can perceive a minimum of common life. We are few but we help each other, for example, if I have to go to the pharmacy in the village close to here, maybe somebody ask me if I can buy something also for him, in order to not let him drive to the same place.

I: so there is community…

L: Yes, we are few, 140/150 people, due to covid so many people are passed away, especially the elderly. But yes, I sincerely feel the sense of community.

Then surely by living here you make a choice of life, in the sense that it is a more peaceful life.

I: are you from Castelvecchio?

L: I was born and raised up here in Castelvecchio . My husband and I went to L’Aquila for work the first years of marriage, but always with the intention of returning here because, especially my husband didn’t like city life. He was born in Switzerland from emigrant parents, his mother was from Castelvecchio, his father was from Naples, they got married in Switzerland, but he didn’t really like living there, it was a chaotic life. I also really like living here in Castelvecchio, even our children grew up here.

I: have you always worked in the world of restaurants?

L: let’s say I have always worked in the “food world”. As soon as I finished school, I didn’t like staying at home and asking my parents for money; I wanted

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to be autonomous and independent, so I first worked in a boutique, then a few months in a goods store and finally thanks to a girl who was attending the school with me, I went to work in a grocery in L’Aquila. Then for a few years I helped my sister with a flower shop, but always with the intention of doing something in the restaurant business, also because I have always enjoyed cooking and eating. When I was a child, there were no playgrounds and many other things, so I was always with my mother or grandmother and in one way or another I learned their work, what they did, even just by looking . During summer when I wasn’t going to school I was always with my grandmother because she was the one who did the most fascinating things in my opinion. If there was bread to be made she used to send me to the baker , because there was an oven in the historic center, and everyone went there to bake bread.

Grandma had one long tray with which she brought the bread on her head, my grandfather made me a tray smaller, my size, so I could even bring bread on my head by myself. So there was my grandmother with this huge tray on his head and behind her there was me with my little tray. I always liked to looking, trying, doing things, maybe that’s why we ended up organizing festivals and holidays. We’ve done weddings of friends, relatives, I always liked this kind of celebrations and this i show I have learned to cook the typical dishes of the Castelvecchio but also ordinary dishes. We deliberately have chosen to call “trattoria” just to give the idea of home made food, a simple restaurant where we use our products: the oil, vegetables, fruits, the 90% of all that you ate is of our production.

I: So life from when you were a child to now has changed L: It changed a lot. I speak from my experience. Surely it has changed for the better if you think of well-being as something ephemeral, but many times I feel nostalgic, because at that time we had a little and we lived better.

There weren’t many thoughts, videogames, mobile phone, today we are so distracted. At that time it is true that sometimes we have even suffered, I don’t mean hunger, but maybe there was a lack of a game or the lack of something, but there was so much love for the family that you didn’t notice it. So when we were little, we never stayed home alone, we used to go to our aunt, uncle, grandmother, or they came to us, there was always an exchange of visits, we were always together. Corn was collected to make polenta and everyone was called: it was a way to be together, to go out, because there was no television, it was a way to escape from your home and it also happened that we also put

“trattoria” just to give the idea of home made food: the 90% of all that you ate is of our production.

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on a record player and we danced, it was a way to work and have fun together. I think your generation will never feel that lightheartedness. Now maybe it’s too late to go back but now too many things are taken for granted.

I: What about your children? Do they leave in Castelvecchio?

L: No. My older son lives in a village closed to here, on the way to L’Aquila, Poggio Picenze . All of them are in the hospitality sector, but with the thought of doing something together in the future, probably also here in Castelvecchio.

The hope is this. My second son works here, in the restaurant. The youngest, my doughter, at the moment works out because she wants to earn some extra money, because here you work well in summer time but during the rest of the year there is not a big job, but also her idea remains to return to Castelvecchio.

I: So how do you see your future and the future of your children here in Castelvecchio?

L: Covid permitting, in general, I hope to recover slowly. As soon as we reopened, after the lockdown, we worked a lot. Many people have come from the North, they did not know this area before, and I hope they have discovered these places and were excited about it. I hope this will foster a brighter future for what I am doing at work. Because then in Italy we could live on only tourism, if we knew how to do it and also if we had help from above, instead of continuing to waste money, the government could invest it on Italians and Italy. It has been 15 years that we have opened here and I always had the idea of doing something for Castelvecchio, we started to make the first festival of Cicerchia, that was the official festival of Castelvecchio, when I was 16 years old.

The villages are beautiful, the places are beautiful and I don’t understand why

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if they do so many beautiful things in Trentino, in Valle d’Aosta we can’t do the same here too. We should have a more open mentality.

I: How do you see an increase in tourism here in Castelvecchio?

L: I’d like to have an increase of tourism, but I don’t want mass tourism. For example, this summer we worked a lot and what I was sorry about was that we couldn’t welcome everyone in the same way. I was sorry for that, that’s the reason why I don’t want mass tourism that just comes to spend in wreckage.

The tourist must feel comfortable in the totality, he must feel welcomed, feel at home; this is what I like, what I look for when I go to visit a place.

I: Can you tell us the strong and weak points of Castelvecchio?

L: The strong point is certainly the historical center. As far as people are concerned, I think we should open up a little more and collaborate with each other because often there is no collaboration even between activities. For example, sometimes I get angry because I hear some tourist that are staying in Santo Stefano di Sessanio and find all the places to eat closed, so they go to Calascio and also there are all closed, and so people advised them to come here to Castelvecchio. I’m glad they come, I also make money, but I’m sorry that these people may think that in these areas we don’t want to work.

In Santo Stefano they are better equipped than Castelvecchio , they have 4-5 restaurants, some pubs and a few small shops because there they were lucky because 20 years ago a Swedish fell in love with this place and thanks to the family fortune he bought the ruins, he restructured them and built an hotel, he did a beautiful thing and then with this excuse the citizens have a city centre that is almost all settled. Then there was also a good advertising campaign, he hammered on Santo Stefano, it became quite famous.

My best memory of Castelvecchio are those 15-20 days around Cicerchia festival , because our parents never let us going out while in those days we could enter and leave the house at any time. The country was full because there were a lot of people coming from outside.

I: Our idea is to create a network between the various towns of the Baronia L: “network” I think everyone here have tried at least once to make it. Now I’ll tell you about the last experience we had with the baronia: I’m talking about last year, always Luigina, the mayor, more people had gone to town with different ideas and she tried to unite them all. We had a meeting with all these people, she hoped that talking we would have found a meeting point to do something.

Everyone seemed to agree, there was me, the baker, the food store owner and also people from Calascio, Santo Stefano etc… then every time we had to meet we were always missing someone. In the end we were left remain alone, it is as if we all had the desire and interest to do something but then in practice nothing was done even of that. Apart from the fact that in my opinion it should be done for tourism, for example, having a single telephone number to ask for information about hotels and restaurants in all the countries of the Baronia, so tourists can be distributed equally and adequate services can be guaranteed. So he would make everyone work in rotation.

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Vanessa 26 years old Lucia’s daughter

I: Tell us about yourself and what you do in you life V: My family and I have a small restaurant, we decided to open it to give more visibility to the village, our aim has always been to make the village know to as many people as possible, and in our small way, we are succeeding.

I: Do you feel involved in the life of Castelvecchio?

V: Due to private problems I decided to leave Castelvecchio and move to the city (L’Aquila), but there’s not a day that I don’t miss it, that’s why I always go back when it’s possible.

I: How do you see the presence of tourists in Castelvecchio?

V: As for the point of view of tourists, they give many compliments for the historic centre, it is really peculiar, like also the villages in the neighbourhood, a lot of tourists they want to return as soon as possible, the only problem is that there aren’t transport to reach Castelvecchio and the neighbouring villages if not by car, but the Mayor has promised to put a shuttle that connects all the villages!

I: Do you have any suggestions on how to enhance your village and territory?

V: There is something that can be done for the village and help small businesses, the citizens over the years added many rooms for tourist, during summer there are many activity and events to enjoy the good weather, but also during the winter they organize concert, nativity scenes, just to give more visibility to the village.

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Trattoria Le 4 Ville

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Nicola 42 years old farmer of saffron

I: Can you briefly tell us the history of saffron?

N: The saffron arrived around 1200 here in Abruzzo and on the Piano di Navelli thanks to a dominican monk from the family Santucci. Then the cultivation of saffron develops immediately throughout the territory and reaches the cities of L’ Aquila and in a short time also in the Peligna valley, in the Subequana valley etc... and it becomes a very important production for the local economy together with the wool and milk. The birth of the city of L’Aquila almost corresponds to the arrival of saffron. Saffron was at the time used in the pharmacopoeia, was not used in the kitchen. Saffron has been known and used in the early centuries, only with the function of medicine.

It has multiple properties: it is useful against depression, curative for some degenerative diseases of the retina, therefore for the eyes and promotes a good mood. So much so that once there was the way of saying “did you sleep on a saffron pillow?” when you met someone that was alredy happy in the early morning. So at the beginning it was used a lot for this fact and from there the large productions, of which the most important fact is 45 quintals in 1800.

Important buildings were built in L’Aquila thanks to the trade of this spice.

So a really important spice for the city and the countryside. The city got rich, the peasant lived there. Over the centuries this happened: the farmer was not the owner of the land, so he rented the plots, the very large part of these plots was used for wheat, but on these plots the rent was burdened, so the farmer had to collect a part for the master and the other part was not enough to feed himself. Instead the part of the land on which he cultivated saffron was exempt from this rent, so it was free. They grew so much saffron, and what

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he plucked was used as a coin because it exchanged during winter festivals, where there were traders who were buying it. Then step by step they start to exchange this spice at the fairs to buy the pig at the beginning of winter to raise and then eat it. And also even they paid the debts they had contracted in the rest of the year because what produces in one year was not enough to live on. This is our story, poor but noble. Because today we have this saffron which is the emblem of our region as a product of excellence, known throughout the world. Also Walt Disney cartoon Ratatouille mentioned this saffron. Today it is

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a symbolic product in the kitchen. Starting with Gualtiero Marchesi, with his famous saffron risotto with gold leaf, from there there was a relaunch of the spice in the kitchen even at a high level. Because before there was a bit of forgetfulness regarding this product I: How is the export of saffron now?

N: Exportation is relative because production is minimal. Last year , for example , we collected 16kg of product. Many people ask us if we export it, but we don’t have enough product. So my idea is to make saffron a good reason to bring the buyer here to the area.

I: You said earlier that saffron is grown in the family, that there are no employee... but is this because there are no large plots or because there are no employees, since it is a very tiring job?

N: More the first, because in any case if you want to find someone who works it, you would succeed, as you can find with other crops. The problem is that the other crops have large extensions, a lot of product, other prices… saffron is a product that is culturally linked to familiarity. The farmer implants what he knows he can govern. Also because maybe, like today, if I had called ten people to pick the flowers, I would have had to pay them to pick just one flower.

It’s not like the grain that is there and you can pick up it for a week. This is a daily job, every morning you have to come to the field, pick all the flowers that you can find, but you do not know when it is born and how much it is born and therefore you must limit yourself for convenience and usefulness to what are your available forces.

I: how big is a saffron field in general?

N: usually it is around 200sqm. But to cultivate 1sqm of saffron field it takes 1kg of bulbs. The average production of 1kg of bulbs is almost 1g of saffron.

So if everything goes well, 200sqm of fields produce a little less than 200g of saffron.

“did you sleep on a saffron pillow?”

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4.4 Q&A People behind Castelvecchio

Antonio 70 years old retired

I T I N E R A N T

I N T E R V I E W

I: Tell us something about the village of Castelvecchio Calvisio, and its history.

A: This is one of the gates to the old town1, and that is the back of the church2, very characteristic since it is not in the center of the town but is itself part of the walled houses, and until the 50s it was embattled and there is only one left! This was not a church... we don’t even know what it was used for maybe a room to serve the village, we only know that in 1470 it was already functioning as a municipal church. It’s very beautiful inside, it’s always closed and I have the keys.

Here is the most important entrance door1. The village has an oval or ellipse shape, this little square has a peculiarity that the door does not correspond to the alley for reasons of defense.

This is the main alley3 and there are six secondary alleys to the right and to the left seven alleys, perpendicular, that did not give outward except for the clock one. In the alleys you notice the external stairs4 made narrow on the ground floor and widen in the upper floors, the reason was to pass with the loaded animals, if the stairs had been wide as above they would remain an alleyway.

This is “oven street” because there was the municipal oven5. We can’t go inside because it’s uninhabitable. The roof has collapsed and now the vault is collapsing too. It was the oven where bread was baked for the whole town.

I: How long was it active?

A: Well... in the 80’s it was still in good use, they baked eighty loaves of bread and when we had the cicerchia festival we baked porchetta (roast suckling pig) and there was a pig weighing a quintal! It was the center of life, there were always people coming, talking...

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I: So it was also a meeting place?

A: Yes, we told stories ...

Many of these houses were fixed before the earthquake, but now, because of internal injuries or the danger of other houses, nobody comes here. Only one person lives there.

Underneath there are the cellars6, we see the bottles, the barrels. All the ground floors were cellars, not residences, because in the valley, in Ofena, they produced grapes and they brought them here and pressed them.

I:So people before the earthquake lived here?

A: Yes they lived there but as second homes. We almost all live outside because here it’s beautiful but uncomfortable. Although compared to other villages is not so inconvenient, having the paved road that passes around the town less than 50 meters from the center of town.

This is the church and this is a very important stone7 because it is the oldest inscription that testifies that in Roman times there were villages here (pagus).

Castelvecchio, Carapelle, Calascio, Santo Stefano and also Castel del Monte were used to protect the pastures of Campo Imperatore where from Puglia they used to bring the sheep and there was the famous Transumanza and there were millions of sheep. So the possession was of utmost importance, therefore, they built bulwarks to protect. The Rocca di Calascio8 was not a castle, it only served to observe and signal. Because these places, which are now the poorest and most mistreated of Abruzzo and Italy, were rich of wool, meat, cheese. The Medici were here for two centuries because of the wool.

Another very important product that has made L’Aquila rich is saffron. Now it is cultivated very little, but once they used to send bales of saffron to Germany.

An enormous production.

I: How come they stopped growing saffron?

A: It’s a fairly processed culture.... (inside the curch) I: You don’t expect to find it so rich inside.

A: In fact this summer I used to open it for tourists who went to the Rocca and passed here. I was struck by the surprise when they looked out, you expect to see a little church with four statues instead you find this altar9.

I: Are these the remains of the ancient foundations?

A: Yes, the superintendent left these things to show the walls10 more than anything else. Before it was all in stone, but in the 50’s they removed everything, they rebuilt the roof, which collapsed, and then they made it in very heavy cement, but thank God it withstood the earthquake that did not damage anything.

As I said, it was not a church, it is asymmetrical, the aisles are two and not three or one, even externally the outer part is higher because it had to serve as a lookout.

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I: Tell us about yourself, what do you do?

A: I was an elementary school teacher, I’ve been retired since 2010, the year after the earthquake, I taught in Ofena and San Pio. I: Are you originally from Castelvecchio?

A: Yes. I was born here because once upon a time people were born in villages. You were born at home, there was the midwife who assisted to the birth. I wanted to become a priest and I stayed in Sulmona for 3 years, then I changed my mind and I went to school to learn teaching. My father had a field in the countryside with the vineyard and the olives so while I was a teacher I did that too.

I got married in ‘86, I was the mayor from ‘85 to ‘95, in short, always in the middle like parsley!

In 1979 another citizen and me invented the festival of cicerchia which was carried on until the earthquake! After that, not so much because of the earthquake itself, it was never held again.

I: Where was this festival held?

A: It was held in the square but we ate in the historical center, in the alleys, with narrow tables. It was very characteristic and it went very well! We did it for forty years.

I: Do you have a favorite place in or around Castelvecchio?

A: Not in particular, maybe my houses, where I lived during the different years.

I: How do you spend your free time?

A: I don’t have one! Even this morning I was arranging the olive trees because soon there will be the olive harvest, and if I don’t have something to do I’ll find it. For example, during the lockdown I made a “Castelvecchio dialect” group. It had a lot of participation. The first week we had more than a hundred participants, who wrote down the various sayings. Because today’s kids don’t know it at all, and in Italian you can’t express the same concepts!

I: How do you get around when you move from Castelvecchio? Do you use a car or public transportation?

A: There is a bus that leaves at seven o’clock in the morning, takes the students to L’Aquila, comes back here at three o’clock, leaves again for L’Aquila and comes back here at eight o’clock. It is not very well connected, but I don’t feel the isolation, in San Pio there is a pharmacy, a big supermarket and it is 6km away. However, L’Aquila is also close, it’s only 30km away and everything is there. The doctor comes here once a week, the medical guard and the ambulance are in Navelli which is quite close. The elementary school, middle school and nursery school are in San Pio with the bus that goes from house to house.

I: So you don’t think services like the pharmacy or the school are needed here?

A: Look, some time ago, there was a pharmacist who came when the doctor came, so you had the prescription and you went straight to the pharmacist at the counter next door, but the number of users has decreased and the

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pharmacist no longer wanted to come here because there were maybe only two people using the service; so the doctor did too. Because this is how it works, it all depends on the users. Even if it becomes a bit like a vicious circle.

If there are no users, there is no service; if there is no service, the users leave, and that’s what happened!

I: How has life changed in Castelvecchio over the years?

A: A lot, from night to day: the habits, the manners.

Fifty years ago we were almost like primitive men here. There was no water in the houses, it arrived in 1962, like the asphalt road. And the drinking water in the public fountains in 1920 from Campo Imperatore, an aqueduct to collect the snow that melted. In the house we warmed ourselves with the fireplace, stoves were rare.

I: Do you have any suggestions on how to enhance the country or the area?

How do you experience the presence of tourists?

A: I am very discouraged about this, pessimistic about development, because I have heard so many speeches, I don’t want to go to conferences anymore.

Nonsense, more for propaganda.

In view of future tourists, the municipalities must be equipped, with policemen.... everything has to be organized, we are a bit individualistic and parochial. All four villages have never been able to come to an agreement, when we did the cicerchia festival, we often did the festival in Castelvecchio and Calascio in the same period. Tourists do not stay the whole month in one country, turn and if we organized it would be better!

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05

Methodology

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5.1 Introduction In the following chapter the methodology of the project is explained, that is a summary of the research work explained in the previous chapters which is incorporated with subjective interpretations and ideas developed during the site visit.

It begins with the analysis and conclusions drawn from these and then develops a project strategy that can fill the gaps and weaknesses found in the research.

5.2 Analysis Through the study of a specific bibliography and the on-site visit, it was decided to develop analyses at four different scales in order to better understand the context of the project site and its fundamental characteristics.

5.2.1 National scale (XL) Analyses at the national scale show that Baronia di Carapelle Calvisio is part of Italy’s inland areas (see chapter 01) and it’s located in an area with a strong naturalistic value, as it is located between several natural parks. Moreover, Abruzzo is among the regions with the highest number of municipalities with less than five thousand inhabitants. On the other hand, it can also be noted that the site is in an area of high seismic and landslide risk.

5.2.2 Regional scale (L) The analyses carried out on a regional scale are the same as those in the previous sub-chapter; it can be seen that the Baronia di Carapelle Calvisio is part of the Gran Sasso National Park and is close to three

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national and regional parks water sistem natural reserves national park Gran Sasso

national park Majella

national park Sirente Velino

national park Abruzzo

Img. 19 - National and Regional parks

other large natural parks, the Majella, Abruzzo and Sirente-Velino. The Abruzzo region is also rich in nature reserves (Img. 19). There is also a rich network of footpaths in the parks.

As mentioned above, the barony is located in an area of high seismic risk and also has a large percentage of municipalities with fewer than five thousand inhabitants (see chapter 3).

What emerges from the Corine Land Cover (CLC) is that a large percentage of the territory of Abruzzo is wooded and fragmented by agricultural areas, while the artificial surfaces are small and mainly located on the coast where the cities have probably found greater development due to tourism (Img 20).

Abruzzo is also a treasure trove of flavours and PDO ( Protected Designation of Origin) and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) products, whether we are talking about crops or livestock products, this region is rich in typical products (Img 21).

Particular importance has also been given to the distribution of tourism, which we see being greater on the coast, near L’Aquila and in a small part in the south of the region (Img 22).

As far as the main connections are concerned, it can be said that there is a fairly good connection between the main cities in Abruzzo.

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artificial surface wooded area agricultural area

Img. 20 - Corine Land Cover round bean raw milk cheese artichoke of Cupello mountain potato saffron red garlic carrot of Fucino Vetricina Terramana Frentana chese “mezzotempo” tomato Cicerchia lentis of Santo Stefano cooked wire white beans olive tree of Mollice

Img. 21 - DOP and IGP products

high

Img. 22 - Tourism map

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5.2.3 Baronia Scale (M) The analyses carried out at Baronia scale are important to understand the common and different aspects among Castelvecchio Calvisio, Carapelle Calvisio, Santo Stefano di Sessanio and Calascio, the villages which constitute this district.

First of all, from the contour lines it can be seen that almost all the villages are located on high ground; the reason for this is to be found in history, since these villages were born as lookout points and therefore, to control enemies, elevated areas with the widest possible view of the surroundings were preferred. All the villages are more than a thousand metres above sea level, except for Carapelle which is only 100m lower.

1251 asl

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Img. 23 - Level curves and city development

All the villages were built on the top of the mountain, where the historic centre is now located, and then over time they expanded and developed along the slopes towards the valley where agriculture and livestock breeding developed (Img 23).

Mostly the four villages are connected by a main road, but there are only a few pedestrian and bicycle paths. It takes about five to ten minutes to get from one village to another, but the lack of a good

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public transport system drastically reduces the possibility of getting around if you do not have your own car.

The environment is predominantly natural, only the small villages and roads interrupt the nature. The CLC study of the area shows that as the mountains rise, the vegetation becomes sparser, giving way to a more barren landscape. The valleys are occupied by agricultural areas and on the rest of the mountains there are wooded areas occupied by different species of trees.

It is in this natural environment that the villages have developed.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio

Calascio

Castelvecchio Calvisio

Carapelle Calvisio

Img. 24 - Facilities

There is a high presence of historical landmarks such as the Rocca di Calascio, the fortified centre of Castelvecchio and the Medicean tower of Santo Stefano; on the other hand, there has been less development of functions and services in the villages, making them almost inhospitable and unlivable, active only at certain times of the year and not present in every village (Img. 24).

An important analysis was made of the views from each village. It was noted that Castelvecchio, due to its almost central position among the four villages and its altitude, is the only one with a view of all the other villages and vice versa.

All these aspects make Castelvecchio the best candidate to become the centre of a new district of the barony (Img. 25).

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Img. 25 - Views

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5.2.4 Urban Scale (S)

Img. 26 - Contours

Going further down in scale and arriving to the urban scale of Castelvecchio village, the first analysis wanted to study the contour lines and the morphology of the mountain on which the village is located in order to understand how to develop a project in this mountain context. In fact, the following analysis also aims to study the context in which the project area is located (Img. 26).

Starting from the analysis of the green areas, it can be noted, as mentioned above, that we are in a very natural area. In spite of this, there are only few green areas within the village of Castelvecchio.

In particular, the green areas that create a buffer between the village and the surrounding nature, consisting of woods and agricultural fields, are mostly uncultivated and abandoned (Img 27).

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wooded areas

agricultural fields

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urban green

Img. 27 - Green

The main risks we can find in this area are linked to possible natural causes, such as fires, due to the huge presence of woods, landslides due to the presence of caves and, as already mentioned, the fact that this area is located in a high seismic danger zone.

There are two roads: one arriving from the west and one from the east; you can only circumscribe the historical centre with vehicles, as inside, the roads are only pedestrian due to their size and slope.

Therefore it can be said that the village has good connections thanks to the road that surrounds the centre and therefore makes it more accessible than other villages in Baronia.

The buildings that make up the urban fabric can be classified into three categories: poor, medium and good conditions (Img 28). This

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Img. 28 - Building condition

Img. 29 - Abandonmed building

conditions are due to a progressive abandonment that began in the 1960s and various seismic events, such as that of 2009, have not helped. The areas that are currently completely abandoned are the old stable area in the south and the historic centre (Img. 29).

In the village there are only a few essential functions (Img. 30), there is a small market with basic necessities, two restaurants, the town hall and the post office. There are a few bed and breakfasts and one guesthouse. From the interviews, however, it emerged that all these realities do not cooperate with each other, making it difficult to carry out even small initiatives.

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Img. 30 - Facilities

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5.3 Strategy From the analyses described above, it has emerged that the Abruzzo region has many qualities, but lacks a project to put them into a system. The strategy of the project, starting from the regional scale and arriving at the urban scale, wants to create a network that can be of help and example to the reality of the internal areas.

5.3.1 Regional Scale (L) Among the Italian regions, Abruzzo is the one with the greatest number of parks and protected areas: three National Parks, one Marine Protected Area, one Regional Park and over thirty Nature Reserves, a record that makes the region the largest naturalistic area in Europe, the true green heart of the Mediterranean.

In the following paragraph we will focus on the parks and the flora that characterise them. (Img. 31) As can be seen, in each park there are common species, but also types of vegetation that characterise the individual parks. Particular attention should also be paid to endangered species, which are protected by the Abruzzo reserves.

Gran Sasso national park 2364 species

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Majella national park 2100 species

2 Sirente-Velino regional park 1570 species

Abruzzo national park 2000 species

3 Img. 31 - Different parks vegetation

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1 Gran Sasso national park field maple

birch

silver fir

yew tree

violet of Majella

edelweiss

limonium

chestnut tree

mountain elm

linden tree

holly

adonis vernalis

mathilda’s Rock jasmine

genepì

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laburnum

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buttercup

slipper of venus

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juniper

2 Majella national park lobel maple

mountain pine

birch

nigritella

3 Abruzzo national park beech tree

birch

red lily

hawthorn

rosehip

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buttercup

mountain pine

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slipper of venus

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gentian

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black hornbeam

hawthorn

pulsatilla alpine

peonies

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4 Sirente-Velino regional park beech tree

birch

field maple

downy oak

turkey oak

narcissus

wild rose

gentian

juniper

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Img. 32 - Regional scale strategy

The project strategy at regional level is based on connecting the various parks in Abruzzo by means of ecological corridors and developing the existing trail system (Img 32).

An ecological corridor is a particular green area, designed to preserve animal and plant species living in that habitat. The main function of the ecological corridor is to allow a gradual transition between one habitat and another.

Ecological corridors have several functions, from the repopulation of certain species to the preservation of plants and spatial elements that would otherwise be at risk in the normal urban situation.

These ‘green systems’ are landscape elements that connect two or more natural habitat patches. They act as habitats and channels for the movement of animals and spores.

On a regional scale, the territory will not only be connected at the level of vegetation, but also thanks to Abruzzo’s extensive network of footpaths. As already mentioned, this region has a great tradition linked to the tratturi (see chapter 3) and it is therefore also thanks to a network of paths that the inland areas would be given new life.

All the planned interventions are also aimed at a better distribution of tourism within the region.

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5.3.2 Baronia Scale (M) The Baronia scale strategy intends to outline in more detail the network between the villages of Carapelle Calvisio, Castelvecchio Calvisio, Calascio and Santo Stefano di Sessanio, the historic villages of the barony.

As emerged from the various interviews, these villages are lacking in cooperation; the strategy will therefore be aimed in this direction, bringing the various villages together in such a way as to bring them back to life.

This will be achieved through physical actions, such as the design of routes that connect the villages and a series of policies that regulate relations not only between the individual villages of the barony, but also with regional, national and European entities (Img. 33) The following strategy has been summarised schematically through the diagram of the semantic package. (Img. 34) Santo Stefano di Sessanio 1251 asl

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Carapelle Calvisio 910 asl 885 asl Img. 33 - Baronia scale strategy: topography

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Img. 33 - Baronia scale strategy: paths Campo Imperatore Barisciano

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Img. 33 - Baronia scale strategy: green mobility

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Img. 34 - Semantic Package

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The network mentioned above (Img 33) is made up of a physical system of nature trails and connections dictated by green mobility, but also by a visual system created through the design of a tower clearly recognisable from each village and also a political system that encourages collaboration between the villages of the barony, but also between them and the authorities at regional, national and European level.

Once the nature trail system had been developed and improved, intermediate stages with the possibility of carrying out different activities were planned. In this way the territory of Baronia was divided into different hubs, based on the characteristics of the places.

Specifically, there are walks through the woods in wooded areas, the design of bivouacs to be used during the day, or as a base for nighttime excursions, while in areas with a greater presence of agricultural fields there will be activities related to this area.

The idea of creating towers, new landmarks, is aimed at visually connecting the four villages of Baronia. The towers are also linked to the history of these villages as, in the past, by lighting large fires they communicated with each other to signal the presence of enemies.

The new landmarks will be placed in strategic positions so that they can be seen by the various villages. In particular, it is clear from the previous analyses that Castelvecchio is the only village visible from all the others, so its tower will always be visible (Img. 35). cultural events

agriculture

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Img. 35 - Activities and new landmarks

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On a social level, a calendar of events has been devised specifically for these villages, based on their history, traditions and characteristics.

The idea is to encourage controlled tourism in Baronia throughout the year. In particular, a festival is to be devised in the summer period.

(Img. 36)

SANTO STEF ANO DI S ES SA NIO CALASCIO

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Img. 36 - Activities calendar

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In order to best devise a strategy that would bring the villages of Baronia together, a study was carried out on the mountain communities, bodies that are widespread throughout Italy, present in all regions and established in Abruzzo since 2008. These local public bodies, whose task is to promote and enhance mountain areas, were abolished in Abruzzo in 2013, including the Comunità Montana Montagna di L’Aquila, which included the municipalities of Carapelle, Castelvecchio Calvisio, Calascio and Santo Stefano di Sessanio.

Another important point in the strategy concerning the four villages of Baronia is therefore the creation of a new small mountain community, so that activities can be better coordinated between the municipalities, and in contact with the natural parks, including the Gran Sasso National Park, of which it is part. This new body will be put in contact with the region, the nation and the European Union through UNCEM-Unione Nazionale Comuni Comunità Enti Montani (National Union of Municipalities, Communities and Mountain Authorities), which has been representing these mountain realities for sixty years, as well as associating provinces, consortia and chambers of commerce operating in the mountains. (Img 37)

The aims of this strategy will be to - Promote and develop mountain territories - to represent the interests of local authorities with public bodies - Distribute funding uniformly - Promote collaboration with national and European bodies for the socio-economic development of mountain areas

Creating a network based on the collaboration of the internal mountain areas concerned will be a starting point for a more collaborative community ready to reborn after having been forgotten for so long.

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Img. 37 - Internal mountain areas strategy

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5.3.3 Urban Scale (S)

Img. 38 - New path connections

Castelvecchio Calvisio is the village which, after various analyses and reasoning, was chosen as the heart of the project.

Following the development of the network of paths connecting all the villages of Baronia, it was decided to better detail the existing connections, as well as the new ones within the village of Castelvecchio Calvisio (Img 38).

1. town landmark

5. historical centre

2. tourist hub

3. natural hub

3.1 botanical garden

Img. 39 - New town hubs

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3.2 polyfunctional centre

Subsequently, based on the previously devised calendar of events and the characteristics of the village, it was divided into different hubs: touristic hub, natural hub, town landmark, cultural hub. (Img 39) The part of the old stables, now completely abandoned, will be reused to form a tourist hub. The buildings in this part of the town will be reused to provide all useful services for tourists.

The southern part of what was once the stables is now a semiabandoned green area; a natural hub has been planned for this area, a botanical garden that recreates the typical flora of Abruzzo on a small scale. A multifunctional centre will be attached to it.

The village’s landmark, as mentioned above, will be a tower. It has been positioned in a strategic place, at the entrance to the village, and thanks to its size it will be visible from all the villages in the barony, and at the same time it will be an excellent vantage point over the surrounding landscape.

1. town landmark

2. tourist hub

3.1 botanical garden

3.2. polyfunctional centre

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The historical centre, now completely uninhabited, is characterised by particular and interesting buildings: the ground floors are all used as wine cellars, while the upper floors are former dwellings. Hence the idea of reusing the cellars, now disused, as areas for art installations and events. The upper floors, on the other hand, resume their former function as dwellings, but following a particular distribution method.

cinema

music

visual art exhibition

summer end festival “sagra”

5. Historical centre

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Starting from the fact that the events will attract more tourists, but also more temporary residents, since the organisers and the necessary workers will live in the village temporarily, there will also be a need for more services, which will be increased and improved (Img 40).

A distribution of the inhabitants, old and new, in the renovated houses was therefore planned using a concentric rings methodology (Img 41). Specifically, the analyses showed that the historical centre of Castelvecchio is entirely pedestrian and built on slopes; based on this study, the houses in the outer circle will be allocated to the inhabitants who live in the village all year round, as the buildings are more easily accessible, in the intermediate circle there will be houses for temporary inhabitants and finally, the heart of the historical centre, the most characteristic but also the most difficult to reach, will be allocated to tourists, together with the area of the old stables.

It can therefore be said that the strategy will be almost entirely based on a philosophy of reusing existing buildings (Img. 42). Only highly unsafe structures will be secured and partially demolished in order to create small green spaces even within the historic centre, which currently lacks them (Img. 43).

bar: 92mq market: 350mq city hall and clinic: 432mq info point: 230mq bakery: 437mq polyfunctional centre covered market: 188mq library: 111mq restroom: 68mq workshop area: 86mq bar: 44,5 mq Info point & office: 50mq warehouse: 12mq

Img. 42 - New facilities

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number of buildings: 173 number of users: 433 total mq: 20154mq

houses for residents

number of buildings: 42 number of users: 84 total mq: 2237mq

houses for workers

number of buildings: 89 number of users: 222 total mq: 4638mq

houses for tourist Img. 41 - Concentric distribution of the inhabitants

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Img. 42 - Reusing existing building scheme

number of houses: 14 numer of reuse green area: 4 total mq: 2154mq

Img. 43 -Green areas

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Project

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6.1 Introduction The following project aims at restarting the local economy, contrasting depopulation through the increase of services and controlled ecotourism and enhancing the characteristics and peculiarities of the place.

The aim is to reconcile what has emerged from the analyses and the strategy in order to develop a project based on the themes of reuse and sustainability, focusing on the urban and landscape regeneration of Castelvecchio Calvisio.

The idea was to intervene in different points of the village that could work together to create a network also on an urban scale.

6.2 Masterplan In the following representation of the master plan, on a scale of 1:1000, the various hubs can be distinguished, as described on the chapter 05. The distinction of the buildings that will be reused is clearly visible, thanks to the colour of the corten, which differs from the rest of the tile roofs (Img. 45).

Particular importance should also be given to the two sections on a scale of 1:1000, from which it is possible to see how the tower exceeds the height of all the surrounding buildings, so that it can be seen from all around, and also, on the side of the natural hub, how the morphology of the land is changed thanks to the terracing (Img. 44).

The town landmark and the natural hub will be the parts of the project that will be developed the most, as can be seen from the volumetric plans on a scale of 1:500.

Img. 44 - Sections

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Town landmark: the tower

Cultural hub: historical centre

Tourist hub

Natural hub: botanical garden

orchards

Natural hub: polyfunctional centre

Img. 45 - Masterplan

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6.3 Town landmark

Img. 46 - Zoom tower

As mentioned above, the new Castelvecchio landmark, thanks to its height, acts both as a visual connection between the villages of Baronia and as a belvedere over the whole area.

As previously written, in the past the villages of Baronia, in case of enemy sighting, communicated with each other by lighting fires visible from one village to another. Referring to this, it was therefore decided to design towers in each village, so that they would be clearly visible from each village during the day, but also at night through an installation of lights (Img 48).

The idea arose mainly from the fact that Castelvecchio currently lacks a viewpoint from which the magnificent panorama surrounding it can be seen at 360 degrees (Img. 47).

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NW Santo Stefano di Sessanio

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Img. 47 - 360° view of the Tower, view from the valley

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Img. 48 - Tower entrance, day/night

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This view tower is made up of identical modules, joined together to create an “L” shape. The structure is almost entirely made of Corten, except for the lift shaft which is made of reinforced concrete. The entire structure is clad in corten sheets which become progressively more distant as they rise to the top. This gives the idea of a building that becomes immaterial as it rises, blending into the sky, reducing the visual impact that a tower might have and balancing the viewer’s vision of the landscape.

The cladding is also more compact on the ground floor and sparser on the top floor, opening up the viewer’s view of the surrounding landscape, inviting him to climb the stairs. The same effect is achieved horizontally from the entrance, which consists of a gallery formed by fairly closely spaced corten steel slabs. At the end of this long gallery there is a large projecting opening that opens onto the landscape and the village of Calascio with its marvellous Rocca (Img 49). panoramic terrace

modules

modules combination

gradual emptying

café, terrace

Img. 49 - Tower concept

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gallery

bike sharing

grid application

As well as acting as a lookout point, the tower has a small cafe on the first floor with a large terrace, and a space for bike sharing on the same floor from which the pedestrian cycle paths described in the strategy (see chapter 5) start and branch out, connecting all the villages in the barony (Img 49).

Where there is the entrance to floor 0, there is a garden full of flowers and trees crossed by a corten path which connects the tower to the path leading both to the historical centre of Castelvecchio and to the natural hub (Img 50).

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Terrace and bike shop view

Terrace view

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6.4 Natural hub

Img. 51 - Zoom natural hub

In the south of the historical centre of Castelvecchio there is a semiabandoned green area with some ruined buildings: this is where the natural hub will be built. It consists of a botanical garden and a multifunctional centre which will host support functions for the garden.

Next to the destroyed buildings that will house the multipurpose centre, there are currently abandoned vegetable gardens; these will be restored and used as urban gardens, thus making them available to citizens (Img 51).

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The project therefore provides for a separation of the available space into a function intended for tourists and one intended for use by the citizens of Castelvecchio. These two areas are physically divided by a large corten staircase from which it is possible to access, from different levels, both the urban gardens and the natural hub. In addition, this staircase is equipped with green spaces that play with heights so as to accommodate trees or flowers in such a way as to blend into the context in which it is located (Img 52).

Img. 52- Corten staircase view

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6.4.1 Botanical garden The currently semi-abandoned green area has been chosen as an area for the development of a botanical garden gathering the numerous species present in the national parks of the Abruzzo region.

Currently this area, being on a mountain slope, is sloping; for this reason terracing has been designed to make it easier to cultivate and care for the flora.

In order to go from one terrace to another, there is a staircase leading from the road to the multifunctional space, from whose landings one has access to the different levels. Inside the garden there are corten “cones” that cut across the terraces and which, thanks to the steps, take the visitor from one terrace to another, and because of their shape, as the visitor climbs the steps the view opens up to him until they reach the next terrace, which is two metres higher up. The terraces are made through the creation of dry walls, which respect Tree

almond tree

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olive

beech tree

juniper

birch

blueberry

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adonis

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orchid

lily

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peonies

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the local tradition and allow the creation of these perpendicular steps (Img. 54).

The garden divides into different areas: buffer, flower area, trees area and horto semplicium, which is notoriously characterised by aromatic herbs; each with different species. The aim is to recreate a natural landscape typical of the Abruzzo region on a small scale, so as to be an educational attraction regarding the flora of the area.

The species have been chosen and located to allow the garden to host different blooms throughout the year, so that there are no periods without any crops (Img 53).

Valeriana

Wild fennel

Coriander

Anise

Mint

Sage

Basil

Origan

Absinthe

Chamomile

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Thyme

Rosemary

Laurel

Grapes (Uva ursina)

Horto Simplicium

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Giaggiolo

Narcissus

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Img. 53- Botanical Garden scheme, flowering calendar

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Img. 54- Botanical garden view

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6.4.2 Polyfunctional centre The abandoned and dilapidated buildings next to the botanical garden, which can be accessed via the staircase described above, are intended to be part of a multipurpose centre housing: a covered market, a café, a library, services, an info point, offices and a small warehouse made available to citizens for the new urban gardens. It can be said that this multifunctional centre brings together both the tourist and the city reality (Img. 55).

Market

Library

Services

Workshop

Green space

Café

Info point

Warehouse

Img. 55- Polyfunctional centre scheme facilities

The challenge faced in creating the multipurpose space was how to reuse these small ruined buildings on different levels. The solution adopted was to use corten modules to be inserted inside the “skeleton” of the existing buildings, so as to preserve the original stone façade and at the same time reuse them and make these new spaces usable.

Prefabricated off-site, the corten structural envelopes will have to be transported to their position, the process simply consists of lifting them and inserting them into the existing structure (Img. 56).

The best compromise was sought to make the old and the new coexist.

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ruins combination

single ruin

ruin as a passage

ruin as a garden

Img. 56- Polyfunctional centre scheme facilities

Externally, the buildings are connected by a system of staircases to the three main levels on which the different entrances are located.

These small buildings are connected externally, but internally they are separated because they are on different levels, as the terrain is steep (Img 57). In the following project we wanted to create agglomerations on different levels, but they are connected both externally and internally. +10.0

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The materials used are both pre-existing, such as stone for the outer walls, and new, such as corten, which was chosen not only for its properties as a sustainable, recyclable material with excellent mechanical resistance, but also for its aesthetic appearance, making the project highly visible in relation to the existing building.

Corten also has a “ruined” appearance and blends well with the aesthetics of the old village.

The interiors are covered with plaster and the openings are all in polymethylmethacrylate (Plexiglas). In addition, waste material and rubble from the demolished stone walls will be used for the external paving of the multifunctional centre and the botanical garden (Img 58).

south elevation

west elevation

east elevation

Elevations

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A C

B

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Keyplan

view 1 view 2

section A, market

Img. 58 - Sections and materials

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view 1

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Img. 57 - Sections and materials

corten

section B, library

plaster

plexiglass

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Polyfunctional centre view

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6.5 References Project: Chapel and visitor centre at Inagawa cemetery Location: Hyogo Prefecture, Japan Architect: David Chipperfield Architects Year: 2016-2017

Inagawa Cemetery is located on a steep site in the Hokusetsu mountain range of Hyogo prefecture, approximately 40 kilometres north of Osaka. The cemetery is laid out across terraces and bisected by a monumental flight of steps leading up to a shrine at the highest point, an axis that orients the whole project.

The visitor centre and chapel are designed as a marked threshold between the outer world and a quieter space within for contemplation.

Aligned with the central staircase, and as a counterpoint to the shrine, the visitor and chapel spaces are gathered around a courtyard.

Visitors approach this space from an exterior platform that leads to a wide, framed central opening in the stepped south-east façade.

The planting of all the gardens is inspired by the palettes and textures of Japanese meadows and woodlands and a selection of grasses, shrubs and wildflowers are carefully juxtaposed.

Following the axial link between the two ends of the site, a rill carries water down the middle of the staircase from the top of the mountain directly towards the building. As it approaches the lower part of the staircase near the chapel, the running water slows and pools as it collects into a trough, then is diverted through a new underground channel under the site to the nearby canal.

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6.5 References Project: Cantilevered Lookout Location: Riosa, Spain Architect: Zon-E Arquitectos Year: 2015

Zon-E Arquitectos designed this striking walkway and lookout near Riosa, Spain, that looks out over an old mining site known as The Rioseco Mining Village, and was originally created in the late nineteenth century.

The lookout, which can only be reached by hiking there, is made from concrete, rusty steel and recycled wood, and acts as a rest stop for visitors.

The lookout portion of the design is cantilevered over a concrete wall to allow people to have an uninterrupted view of the old Rioseco mine area, the valley and the surrounding mountains.

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6.5 References Project: The Hundred Terraces Garden Location: Awaji, Japan Architect: Tadao Ando Year: 2000

The garden is located on Awaji, a small island in Japan’s Hyōgo prefecture, whose landscape was heavily altered in the seventies and eighties by the removal of land used for various projects in Osaka Bay. As can be easily imagined, the island’s natural environment was severely damaged and, to make matters even worse, in 1995 the area was hit by the great Kobe earthquake that killed over 6000 people.

Built in a panoramic position on the side of a hill, and conceived as a prayer garden and tribute to the victims of the great Kobe earthquake, the Hyakudan-En garden (literally “the hundred steps” in Japanese) consists of 100 small square gardens, each measuring 5 metres on a side, surrounded by flights of steps, 14 steps on the south and north sides to overcome 2 metres of difference in height and 7 steps on the east and west sides for 1 metre of difference in height. The result of this apparently simple scheme is a terraced green space, combining a rigorous geometric design with the lively colours and scents of a wide variety of shrubs and flowering plants belonging mainly to the chrysanthemum family.

The steps that form the connecting ramps are made of exposed concrete, while the retaining walls of each garden are made of local grey stone.

The Hundred Terraces Garden is divided into three main areas: the first is a meditation garden called “Garden of Prayer for the Sea Gods”, the second is a fruit and herb garden called “Harvest Garden” and the third, which is planted with native island essences, is entitled “Awaji Meadow Garden”.

Completed in March 2000, Awaji Yumebutai, the island’s regeneration project is a system consisting of gardens and public squares with ponds and small waterfalls, a botanical garden and tropical greenhouse, a conference centre with a 100-seat auditorium, an open-air theatre, a pavilion for the tea ceremony, a small church, a Buddhist temple, as well as a hotel, shops and restaurants.

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6.5 References Project: Quilapilún Park Architect: Panorama Location: Colina, Chile, Year: 2012

Parque Quilapilún is the first Botanical Garden exclusively dedicated to represent and educate on local and regional flora in Chile. It is a mining compensation project that integrates several social and environmental requisites.

Quilapilun is a project that proposes the creation of a discovery space, that exhibits and values diverse native landscapes from Chile´s central zone, especially those seen in the Metropolitan Region. The masterplan area is located north Angloamericans’ Minera Sur Andes (MSA) property, adjacent to Route G-131 (Quilapilun – Polpaico) with wide views towards the Chacabuco Valley and has a surface greater than 375 hectares to develop five different areas of intervention.

Panorama worked in concept design, approvals process, construction management, and operation for the first two years.

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6.5 References Project: Novartis Campus Park Architect: Vogt Location: Basel, Switzerland Year: 2016

Geological maps of the Basel area indicate a hidden landscape; the Basler Rhine Valley formed by glaciers and rivers, now covered with settlements, agriculture and other evidence of human activity.

Novartis Campus Park is once removed from its natural fundament by a subterranean garage, two hectares of poured concrete that act as a new, anthropogenic geological crust serving simultaneously as the park’s fundament and as a large-scale green roof.

Novartis Campus Park’s design echoes the Upper Rhine Valley landscape composition of geomorphic and vegetative phenomena.

Gently descending from the upper terraces down to the Rhine, the park sequentially reconstructs the natural phenomena of the surrounding Rhine terraces on a small scale, and merges them into an atmospheric park landscape. The design references its surroundings, geologically and botanically, working mainly with natural vegetation. In the upper parts of the park stand a forest of native trees among which huge boulders seem to have remained as old glacial traces. Deep in the woods, the landscape appears suspended in a moment of devastation, like steep woodlands after a heavy snowmelt. Generous meadows form the park’s middle section, which is planted with diverse, mainly exotic, solitary plants. Deeply cut paths lead through these meadows near the Rhine where tapered poplars and birch groups punctuate alluvial iris-grass meadows native to the landscape. The artificial platform that stretches between the upper parking area and the Rhine is in essence a manmade stage, on which nature performs.

The paths diverge into the rising terrain to reconstruct another Baseltypical phenomenon, the “Hohlweg”, a narrow track cut into the earth and overgrown to become a tunnel of dense shrub. Following this, the visitor passes through the middle section and reaches lower terraces facing the Rhine. Here, alluvial iris reed grass vegetation is punctuated with solitary birch and cottonwood groupings standing tall on the vegetal horizon. The visitor enjoys an open view to the nearby Rhine and in turning, overlooks the entire park.

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6.5 References Project: Modern Prefab Metal Home (Re)Mixes Brick, Wood & Steel Location: England Architect: Haworth Tompkins

This metal-clad house has layers perfect for those chilly and overcast winter months in the rural British landscape, each material with unique and compelling properties, piled one upon the next. Light plywood walls lining the interior give way to a rusted steel exterior, in turn surrounded by an aged and crumbling brick wall.

Designed by Haworth Tompkins, prefabricated off-site, the woodand-metal structural shell was transported to its location. The ‘construction’ process consisted simply of lifting it up and slotting it into place like the piece of some giant new puzzle piece or key designed to perfectly fit an ancient lock windows and doors were of course only added afterward.

The original building was for the birds, an old dovecote (space for housing doves or pigeons) that has been converted into a kind of ‘cozy’ wrapped around the new house. The addition of a metal layer would be off-putting but the naturally rusting corten blends it right in, dovetails, if you will, with the surrounding rural township.

Ruins are rustic and romantic; rusted steel is sleek and stunning; wooden walls make a place feel warm and worth living in, in short, this small-but-creative prefab house may be simple in plan but is complex enough to accommodate a variety of architectural and aesthetic tastes and trends on a single piece of property.

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Bibliography and sitography

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Bibliography “AA.VV., Atti della XVIII Conferenza nazionale SIU Italia ‘45-’45, Venezia 11-13 giugno 2015”, Platinum Publisher (2015); “Piccole Italie. Le aree interne e la questione territoriale”, Borghi Enrico, Donzelli editore (2017); “Valorizzazione dei centri storici minori. Strategie di intervento”, Briatore S., Edizioni Diabasis (2011); “Riabitare l’Italia. Le aree interne tra abbandoni e riconquiste”, De Rossi Antonio, Donzelli editore (2018) “Italy’s remote villages now make an ideal escape”, Imam James, The Guardian (2020) “La rinascita dei borghi”, Millionaire (January 2021) “La città dell’uomo”, Domus n° 1019 (December 2017)

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“Italy’s small towns enclose the DNA of humanity, their evolution speaks of the dignity of people, because everything, from the streets to the stairs, to the squares, was born to facilitate relationships, a culture that puts man and his needs at the center, creating dialogue and releasing color and beauty.”

Daniel Libeskind