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The essay focuses on the results of the strategy “Attrattività dei borghi storici” (Historical small centres attractiveness), funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC) within the resources allocated by the European Parliament (Next Generation Europe program) for the National Plans for Recovery and Resilience of the member states (PNRR). The essay presents the first, mainly quantitative results of the initiative which, even if the experience is still ongoing, offers the opportunity to reflect on the new tendencies in Europe towards the policies for social cohesion and social inequalities decrease. As it is well-known, these policies have the main purpose of rescuing inner territories at risk of abandonment looking at them as important reservoir of resources to be revived rather than “places to be saved”. After a general framework of the topic in the first part, the essay then analyses the results of the so-called “Bando Borghi” whose main characteristics are synthetically described in the second part of the paper. In particular, in the essay the results of the socalled “Linea B”, addressed to the small towns with less than 5000 inhabitants, are examined. The analyses is based on the quality of the project that were presented, but also on three parameters: the participation, the resources allocation, and the distribution of the selected projects in the national territory. Some final reflections about the initiatives conclude the paper.

In the last decades, the growing concern about land consumption, together with the awareness of cultural heritage's role for sustainable development, has led to paying greater attention to cultural properties reuse. However, the complexity embedded in reuse choices calls for proper tools that, relying on a deep knowledge of the asset understudy, can support the design and evaluation of suitable alternatives. Furthermore, as the official documents in the conservation field suggest, this complexity requires considering the social dimension of heritage reuse as a crucial factor in the decision domain. Based on these premises, the paper aims at investigating the reuse issue by focusing on its social dimension through a comprehensive approach, integrating a theoretical and methodological perspective. It moves from theoretical reflections, grounding on the conservation debate, about architectural heritage reuse social dimension. These reflections serve as a lens to analyze the different methodologies set in the evaluation field to assess alternatives for reuse projects by giving prominence to their social impact. Then, the previous reflections are better focused through a case study, identified in choosing the most suitable reuse alternative for the "Ritiro del Carmine" Monastery in the Campania Region. Finally, the implications of such an integrated approach are discussed by highlighting its strategic role in heritage conservation decisions and its room for improvement.

Il tema dello spopolamento delle aree interne e delle strategie per il loro rilancio è da qualche tempo tornato alla ribalta a seguito della pandemia e del conseguente periodo di quarantena che, tra le altre cose, ha messo a nudo le numerose fragilità dei grandi centri urbani. Dopo decenni di appelli inascoltati, all’improvviso sembra si sia scoperto quanto piacevole e sostenibile possa essere vivere nei piccoli centri delle aree interne e si ripropone, forse con più forza, una questione che era già al centro di alcune strategie e azioni sia a scala nazionale che europea. Ripercorrendo temi e problemi emersi nel corso del convegno internazionale “Un paese ci vuole”. Studi e prospettive per i centri abbandonati e in via di spopolamento, tenutosi a Reggio Calabria nel novembre del 2018, il saggio propone una riflessione sulle reali prospettive di ripopolamento di piccoli centri in aree marginali partendo da alcune parole chiave che dovrebbero auspicabilmente guidare i programmi di rinascita. Al centro della riflessione si pone il ruolo che il patrimonio culturale può avere in questi processi, nella prospettiva però di un significativo cambio di paradigma che inserisce la conservazione e valorizzazione di tali beni in un processo circolare che parte dal territorio (inteso come un sistema complesso dove processi storici, culturali ed economici si intrecciano con le pratiche sociali) e al territorio ritorna. Strategies and Policies for Relaunching Depopulated Small Towns in Inner Areas. A Human Scale Perspective The topic of abandonment has become more topical than ever in the last few months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since March 2020, newspapers and blogs have been dedicating at least one article or editorial per day to the incredible rediscovery of how sustainable and liveable lockdown has been in hamlets and small towns in inner areas rather than in big cities. Thus, it seems that after years of unheard appeals from small local communities at risk of disappearing, rather than being a problem, small towns are now becoming important resources. Starting from the topics and issues proposed during the International Conference One needs a town. Studies and perspectives for abandoned or depopulated small towns, held in Reggio Calabria in 2018, the essay focuses on the concrete perspectives for the repopulation of small towns in inner areas. The perspective, which recalls the approach of the Conference, implies a more dynamic idea of repopulation, which involves the economic and social regeneration of these territories. Moreover, the purpose is also to verify if and how the enhancement of cultural heritage might play a significant role in hindering depopulation. In other words, the aim is to reflects on how culture may play a part within the broader economic and social strategies for the repopulation of marginal areas, including cultural heritage, which is the focus of the essay.

In recent times, widespread reflection on the destiny of inner areas has arisen. New approaches, particularly in the economic, social and “territorialist” fields tend to consider fragile areas – it matters not if they are mountain or hilly areas, rural or urban peripheral areas, monumental sites or areas whose values are to be found in memories and stratifications which time had transcribed onto “what remains” – as strategic places for the care of the territory, to hinder civil and economic inequalities, and those which stem from climate change. The prevailing idea is that fragility or marginality of the so called “places that don’t matter”, which conserve important cultural capital but where more and more often very worrying social and political demands mature, can become an important resource if only we try to reconstruct the connections between places and dwelt-in communities, which with time, for diverse reasons, have been frayed. In the wake of this new vision, the main objective of this essay is to investigate not so much the fragility which regards the physical degradation of buildings and settlements, which is the consequence of the marginalization of territories, but, more in general, and with more ambitious aims, to investigate how the crisis of the system of relationships between man and his habitat, which underlies every kind of fragility, has a consequence on the lack of memory and significance of architectural heritage. The paper also analyses a perspective that has already been studied in other fields, but which has been less studied in the field of architectural restoration. According to this perspective, the programme of reconstruction, more than on the tangible aspect of this heritage and on the possibility of re-use, should intervene on the relationships that over time have transformed these places and buildings in important “reserves for meanings”. Starting therefore from this reflection on the concept of fragility and trying to focus on the relationship between fragile heritage and lack of identity, the essay tries to outline possible approaches based on the idea that the relaunch of these places does not depend on a possible, self-referential recognition of the values that this heritage holds, but on the role that they take on in processes of construction (or reconstruction) of the communities that live there.

The essay introduces the book Viollet-le-Duc and the nineteenth-century, which in part gathers together the results of the study-day on Viollet-le-Duc La Nostalgia delle origini. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc e la percezione del Medioevo nell’Ottocento (University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, 7 May 2014). The essay also proposes some reflections on the significance of celebrations of the past – in this case, the bicentenary of Viollet-le-Duc’s birth – for the future. In the first part, starting with the analyses of the initiatives dedicated to Viollet on this occasion, the study investigates less known aspects of the complex personality of the French architect: his visionary attitude, which, in some cases, prevails on the rationalist approach to architecture. It also underlines the actuality of Viollet-le-Duc’s contribution in the definition of theoretical and practical aspects in architecture. Despite the improvement of studies dealing with his complex personality, he is still wrongly confined in the “narrow circle of restoration”. In the second part of the study, describing the contents of the book, the essay investigates the relationship between Viollet-le-Duc and 19th century culture, trying to highlight how our controversial relationship with that time, significantly influences our interpretation of Viollet-le-Duc’s theoretical and practical work.

The essay analyses the contribution of art historians and art critics in the debate on historic buildings and historical city centres between the two World Wars. In particular, it analyses the debate on the relationship between tradition and innovation in architecture which art historians and critics had with architects, planners and restorers. In the years preceding the Second World War, and the complicated phase of reconstruction, the perspective of art historians on cities and historic buildings was, in many cases, more critical and aware than that of architects. Architects, who in general considered tradition and modernity as opposites to be reconciled on an ad hoc basic, always with an eye to compromise, were engaged in defending or radically defeating the last remains of die-hardism. The essay traces the contribution of art historians to the debate on urban and historic urban fabric transformations in the years of the Fascist regime. In particular, the paper studies their attempts to go beyond - from a theoretical and methodological point of view - the typically nineteenth-century contrast between ancient and new or, similarly, conservation and transformation. The purpose is to analyse their efforts, which, however, turned out to be unproductive during the actual post-war reconstruction. Their theory tried to establish a relationship between the opposites (new/old) through critical analyses, involving town planning and restoration to the same extent, even if with different roles.