Why do we ask ourselves this question today?
Have we perhaps not sufficiently protected our historical heritage? Have we perhaps not also recognized as such the oldest parts of our towns and small urban agglomerations? Are several decades of debates and discussions on the value of the material testimonies sedimented in the territory and of as many regulatory elaborations on their recovery and valorization no longer able to guarantee their integrity? It certainly seems not.
The culture of the historic center was born in the post-war period and developed especially in the second, when the damage caused by war conflicts required massive reconstruction and redevelopment interventions. That was a period of great fervor, both from a practical point of view and for the formation of a national theoretical-regulatory apparatus capable of projecting the structure and function of our historic agglomerations into the future, preserving their intrinsic characteristics, recognized as having great historical-documentary, but also urban and social value.
The theme was taken up again in the 1970s, when at an international level the so-called “Amsterdam Charter” defined that the European architectural heritage is not only made up of the most important monuments but also of the groups that constitute our ancient cities and our traditional villages, in their natural environment, and that this architectural heritage is the common heritage of all peoples.
In those years our Province issued the first regulations that aimed to safeguard, protect and socially reuse existing historical settlements as a support for traditional functions and ways of life, which form a cultural and economic heritage of primary importance for the Trentino community. It was therefore established that historical centers are cultural and environmental assets, of which knowledge, protection, conservation, redevelopment and revitalization should be promoted to contribute, in terms not only of individual convenience but also of collective interest, to a more satisfactory economic-social balance of the territory. The guarantee of adequate living conditions for residence and social services has always been one of the main criteria, an aspect that has never disappeared.
Various further regulatory elaborations have maintained the primary objective of safeguarding the historical asset and extended this concept to the entire urban complex of relevance, to public space, to that of collective use, to the network of alleys, streets and squares. Often, however, the regulations have not been able to guarantee in practice interventions respectful of the historical characteristics and the most significant values of the ancient settlements: thus the trivialization produced by minor, but widespread interventions, and the insertion of typologies dissonant from the specific Genius Loci, have largely degraded their characteristics.
In this problematic scenario, in the last decade, some potentially devastating reforms have fallen on the historical settlements of Trentino: the possibility of demolishing buildings subject to renovation, the possibility of raising any building not directly protected and the possibility of demolishing even buildings to be rehabilitated, if judged unstable. These rules already allow the razing of entire minor historical settlements and a large part of the major ones: if this has happened only to a small extent it is due to the common sense of the citizens or the inertia of the building sector.
As if that were not enough, a further serious threat looms on the horizon: denying decades of cultural development and planning commitment, the announced reform of the provincial councilor for urban planning Mattia Gottardi to combat the depopulation of historic centers, proposes the “final solution”: “demo-reconstruction” also for buildings subject to redevelopment (therefore having valuable characteristics), which will especially affect the so-called “minor” nuclei and which could involve not only individual buildings but also entire areas. Demolish the old, large and compact stone houses to build new buildings, equipped with balconies and windows, putting self-consumption first – with photovoltaic panels – and energy efficiency – with thermal coats, incentivize reconstructions possibly of smaller volume and set back from the roadbed, in order to widen the roads!
Wipe away with a sponge the tangible signs of the peasant culture that has formed, maintained, cared for and transmitted to subsequent generations an extraordinary territory and its architectural emergencies. And all this due to a lack of analysis, given that it is absolutely questionable to identify the cause of the depopulation of the historic centers – moreover not homogeneously present throughout the territory – in the typology of the buildings, when for decades not even the slightest policy of social revitalization of these areas and incentives for building recovery and the development of economic activities has been implemented.
The important national conference, entitled “HISTORICAL SETTLEMENTS: DEMOLISHING CULTURE?”, organized by Italia Nostra on June 7 at Palazzo Geremia in Trento, with the presence of twelve qualified speakers and supported by a dozen sponsors – including the Municipality of Trento, the two professional Orders of Architects and Engineers and the main voluntary associations in the cultural sector, has demonstrated that the urban conformation of historical centers, so concentrated and compact, is also the most efficient model of sustainability and that current intervention techniques and technologies allow for excellent standards of energy efficiency, to ensure adequate structural consolidation and improvements in anti-seismic behavior. Far from the intent to crystallize historical settlements, it is therefore necessary to confirm the absolute necessity of preserving their integrity, both as an irreproducible cultural testimony and as a reproducible settlement model. Their destruction would be an inconsiderate action on a cultural level and, furthermore, ruinous on an ecological level.
The measures announced by the Urban Planning Councillor would nullify decades of commitment to the conservation of the architectural and urban heritage of Trentino.
But this is not the only danger, equally serious would be the loss of the sense of identity, the loss of the intangible heritage that the historic centers, with their material presence, pass on to us: the testimony of a civilization, the awareness of our history, of the principles, values and concepts that have been at the basis of every human action that has manifested itself here and that still has, today, so much to tell us and perhaps even something to teach us.
Manuela Baldracchi
President of Italia Nostra, Trentino Section
The article was published in the newspaper “L’Adige” on 27 June 2024
