The Abandoned Railway Heritage: From Problem to Opportunity for the Regeneration of Minor Historic Centres

The phenomena of socio-economic polarization, metropolization and intensive exploiting of territorial resources have progressively weakened the relationship between historic centres and territorial context, fostering unsustainable forms of mobility and land use transformations that require new strategies for territorial rebalancing and regeneration. In particular, on the one hand, minor historic centres are nowadays involved in phenomena of abandonment, ageing of the population, declining of local economies that suggest a relaunch of activities and facilities in the framework of sustainability, denying speculative and pollutant touristic development. On the other hand, the heritage of these inner areas, constituted by landmarks of Italian historic masterpieces, need a preservation and valorisation of their identity forms and cultural values within a territorial point of view. In this context, the increasing number of secondary lines characterized by underutilization, result of liberalization processes and unfair mobility policies, have produced enormous social costs in terms of social exclusion, depopulation and weakening economies of widespread historic settlements. The paper focuses on the role of dismissed minor railway networks, at the same time, for enhancement and relaunch of this minor historic centres and territory, with particular reference to railways lines of landscape interest and historic trains, in a broader concept of the notion of cultural heritage. In fact, the abandonment of this mobility networks is recognized as a challenging opportunity for the regeneration of lines, stations, bridges, roadman’s houses, and the innovation of tourist services towards resilience paths, supporting the reflection with an emblematic best practice from the Abruzzo and Molise Regions.