Paesaggi terrazzati dell’Italia meridionale: un’analisi comparativa tra passato, presente e futuro

In Italy, many kilometres of dry stonewalls describe a big area of cultural landscapes, changing colours and forms depending on local orographic, social and natural data. They all share beautiful, loneliness and fear of the future. The abandonment of terraced agricultural areas is a vast problem that, besides increasing geological risk, also introduces consequences such as losses in productive land, damage to bio-diversity and to cultural heritage. Since 2016, the Department of Architecture at the University of Roma Tre has been supporting communities that want to protect their landscape heritage, looking for contextual saving-strategies. This text summarizes the results of three researches that worked on some of the most representative terraced landscapes of central and southern Italy: the terraced olive groves of Vallecorsa (FR), the rural landscape of the lemon groves of Amalfi (SA) and the historical rural landscape of Pantelleria Island (TP). The study of these landscapes has been tackled with a holistic approach, including historical, economic, social, visual information. This kind of comparison allows to identify common data in terms of potential and vulnerability of Italian terraced systems.