Centri storici e turismo, problema o risorsa?

Modern tourism, with its beginnings in the Grand Tour whose elite participants enriched their human and cultural experience, has transformed over time. Since the post-World War II period, it has become the main form of temporary migration, as well as one of the world’s most important industries. Over the last 30 years, the emergence of several different forms of tourism means that we now have to talk about tourism in the plural. Mass tourism has been flanked by new trends driven by renewed social, environmental and cultural awareness. Increasingly attentive to the values expressed by local contexts, these trends attribute a fundamental role to the historic centres of the Italian peninsula as potential protagonists of new forms of travel. Given the necessity, as a form of civic and cultural responsibility, to preserve Italian historic centres – which together make up an extensive and widespread form of cultural heritage – this essay questions the role of tourism as a “twin force”. Is tourism a factor in the irreversible transformation of an economic, social, spatial and cultural framework, or is it a tool that can help preserve and enhance the resources of the past for handing down to future generations?