Abandoned Historic towns in the South of Italy. Conservation and Sustainability issues

Valentina Russo

University of Naples Federico II, Dept. of Architecture, Napoli.

valentina.russo@unina.it

ABSTRACT

Over five thousands on the whole Italian territory, the so-called "ghost towns", although increasingly object of studies, have in most cases a high degree of obsolescence and only on rare occasions a process aimed at ensuring the slowing of decay has been tested. The latter was generally caused by the demographic exodus which generates a diffuse consumptive process with the decay of the materials, lacking the even minimal maintenance. The economic decline is the main reason of depopulation so that the same natural disasters as landslides or earthquakes are, in many cases, only accelerators of a phenomenon already in place. The general phase of decline seems to have found today a way out thanks to the diffusion of new sectors of economic development, alternative to the traditional ones. In particular, "the tourism industry" seems to have become the main chance for the recovery of abandoned settlements with outcomes often falsifying the identity of places.

Starting from these considerations, the paper focuses the attention on the issue of the destiny of "abandoned" small towns in relation, in particular, to the context of peninsular South of Italy proposing a reflection about the goals and outcomes of interventions as well, therefore, about the results of studies carried out, with a "participatory" process, in the settlement of Tocco Caudio (Benevento). The medieval site in the Sannio context is at the present under high structural instability while at the same time, it is the object of attention and expectations by the local community.

Also in the mentioned case, the restoration strategies call for complex challenges, primarily economic, for which the comparative assessment of multicriteria "sustainable" options for appropriate intervention techniques, in terms of conservation and refunctionalization, seems to be the only suitable one. Thinking in terms of materials and logistics for the transport, of intervention techniques applied by local workers, response factors to comfort from the functional point of view, for the saving of resources and their recyclability leads to outline, in the case-study, several possible strategies, differentiated for the results but sharing their broad objectives and related to a multi-thematic concept of "sustainability".

Key-words: Historic towns, depopulation, functional sustainability, restoration.