Paesaggio e identità (o il valore mutevole del paesaggio)

Abstract

The paper focuses on the theme of landscape and on the changing nuances and interpretations that characterize it. The term was consolidated in the nineteenth century, assuming a value mainly pictorial (picturesque), but evolves over the twentieth century by accepting different meanings to become, in its most current sense, cultural landscape, understood as «the combined action of nature and man». It is the meaning that defines the human transformations of territories, distinguishing geographical and cultural contexts. The aspects covered by the text regard specially the different ways of perceiving the landscape, the radical changes that some of them have undergone in a relatively short time over the last two hundred years, the processes by which these have been rejected or assimilated collectively. “New” landscapes in progress and changes of use and meaning are analyzed as well. Finally, it concerns the link with the identity, the memory, as well as the settling processes and consolidation of the collective imaginary of a territory. Some examples demonstrate the shifting values of the landscape, from those related to abandoned contexts, to the aspects linked to forsaken industrial heritage, to sites in ruins and landscapes, only apparently, natural.