The village of Faito, towards a sustainable future

On the top of Mount Faito, one of the most panoramic sites of the Lattari mountains in Campania, is a small semi-abandoned village, once a thriving tourist destination and sports resort, built at the beginning of the fifties of last century in the municipality of Vico Equense. Built to be a self-sufficient village with church, theater, farm, parkings, residences and hotels, today the place is in a state of severe decay, in opposition with what it could offer with its natural beauty. The history of the village goes back to the early XX century, when the Giusso family, owner of the Faito estate, turned into a mule-track a footpath going from Castellammare up to the top, where the only existing buildings were Villa Giusso and the small basilica of San Michele Arcangelo. Without altering the landscape, but improving the level of environmental safety with naturalistic engineering interventions to defend the soil, a new appropriate and sustainable use of these contexts can start integrated and systemic valorization processes in an area with a strong landscape-environmental constraint.