Highlighting Landscape Events in the Way of Saint James: Rapperswil and Puente Villarente.

Abstract

The Way of Saint James, declared its stretch in northern Spain as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1993 (Reference: 669 bis), it is one of the most important cultural pilgrimage routes of the Christian world. Throughout its complex evolution, it has become a catalyst for landscapes and times which give it different meanings that can be read in deferential ways: mystical, narrative, aesthetic, etc. Landscapes of great intense value are present along the route that need to be empowered through subtle but effective actions to make them visible. This potential precise an energetic action but endowed with aesthetic sensitivity and legitimized by the knowledge of all its complexity. These special areas are use to be detected near distinguishing elements in the way that have made complex the evolution of their landscape, like it happens with the presence of obstacles to save. Two distant case studies are analyzed in the Way of Saint James: The footbridge between Rapperswil and Hurden (Switzerland) and the footbridge in Puente Villarente (Spain). In both cases, the introduction of a new infrastructure for crossing lake and river respectively is intentionally used as a landscape strategy to extract, display and explain the meaning of their environment characterized by the presence of water.