Recovery strategies for urban public heritage. Viterbo case study

In 2016 the Municipality of Viterbo commissioned to the Sapienza university the drafting of a Masterplan for the historic center of Viterbo. The enhancement of a complex system like the ancient city has imposed some preliminary observations: first of all a deep knowledge of its distinctive characters, of its main formation processes and the different shapes that the historical city assumed during time.The knowledge of all these elements is necessary but cannot be reduced to an attitude of mere interdiction. No protection is truly decisive if it is not accompanied by an idea of use of the urban heritage. The first and main theme of the masterplan concerned the re-use of the center, in all its possible ranges; from the highlighting of its values, to the reaffirmation or not of its primary centrality towards the surrounding landscape, to the culture of the city as a place of maximum concentration of heritage. It is for this reason that one of the masterplan's strategic plans has estimated the amount of abandoned public ownership, as if to draw a kind of map of underuse that, on one hand, allows the public administration to identify the main available resources, on the other it represents the real opportunity of transformation of the city center. The hypothesis of reuse proposed for the masterplan of the historical center alternates functions related to residence and receptivity to tertiary functions, linked to services for culture and leisure.