Recovery of rural centres and "albergo diffuso": A case study in Sardinia, Italy

The “albergo diffuso” (scattered hotel) is a typical Italian tourism system, introduced for the first time in the early 1980s by the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It is a tourist accommodation management system that is able to deliver the services of a full hotel, by lodging clients in accommodation created in and around existing houses in mostly rural contexts. The accommodation is within walking distance of a centrally located main building. The albergo diffuso is organised horizontally, while traditional hotels are usually organised vertically, with a principal, and often single, building hosting common spaces and rooms. This new kind of hospitality offers visitors the opportunity of “living in the area”, by taking part in the social life of the village, and may be seen as a tool for preventing the depopulation of small rural towns and for recovering abandoned villages. In this paper we discuss a proposal for an albergo diffuso in Osini, in Sardinia, Italy. Osini is an old rural village that was abandoned in 1951 because of a severe landslide. We verify the premises and viability of this intervention in terms of the opportunity it offers for launching rural tourist activities in the area, the European and national legal and institutional scenario, the regional landscape and hydro geological planning tools, and the recommendations for adopting coherent building types, techniques, and materials.