Pratiche di recupero dei centri abbandonati. Esperienze dall’Abruzzo e dal Molise

The interior areas of Abruzzi and Molise are littered with abandoned centres, primarily small towns and villages. We see total abandonment mainly in mountainous areas. Partial abandonment impacts almost all of the rest of the territory, including places that had previously undergone rapid industrialization like Val Vibrata, Val di Sangro and Valle del Trigno. As in the rest of the country, here innumerable experiences are underway to limit abandonment and revive ancient settlements. However, the results have not always lived up to expectations. Tourism and cultural promotion were behind well-known interventions in S. Stefano di Sessanio, in L’Aquila, where a clever entrepreneur from the north bought the village, aiming to transform its old houses into rooms for tourists, and the similar case of Castel del Giudice in Campobasso. The same can be said for the experiments underway, especially during the summer season, in Castelbasso and Ripattoni di Bellante in Teramo, where cultural initiatives and artistic promotion are testing forms of territorial marketing. On the basis of ongoing research and the soon-to-be-published volume, this contribution reports on attempts to revitalise abandoned centres in Abruzzo and Molise, discussing their limits and objectives. The objectives include pairing the recovery of housing with the design of abandonment and selection of large-scale museum criteria in the territory, in order to draw the areas back into the network with their landscape and promotion of their residual identity.