Article 9 of the Constitution entrusts the Italian Republic with tasks including cultural promotion, scientific and technical research, landscape protection as well as safeguard of the national historical and artistic heritage.

In this framework, cultural parks play a relevant role as organised places that aim to knowledge, protection and enhancement of cultural heritage throughout the territory by means of the organisation of spaces. The Italian legislation does not provide for the concept of theme or cultural park; however, some fundamental steps can be made in order to lay the basis to divide them into three main categories: archaeological, naturalistic and literary parks.

The 1939 legislation provided for the protection of archaeological, historical and artistic assets of a relevant interest. Today, Legislative Decree no. 42 of 2004 providing for the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape, defines in article 10 (part II) cultural heritage as the “properties and real estates belonging to the state, the regions, territorial public authorities, no-profit private individuals that show an archaeological, historical, artistic or ethnic-anthropological interest. Furthermore, cultural heritage includes: the collections of museums, galleries and other exhibition places, archives and single documents, library collections, all belonging to the state, the regions and public authorities”. However, it also includes heritage of extraordinary cultural interest belonging to subjects other than the ones mentioned above. Differently from the past, cultural heritage also includes “properties and real estates, whichever they belong to, that are particularly important due to their reference to the political, military, literary artistic and cultural history, namely as witnesses of the identity and history of public, collective or religious institutions (Legislative Decree no. 42/2004, section 10, paragraph 3, letter d). In this framework it is eventually possible to include the specific type of literary park.

Section no. 101, on the contrary, provides for a distinction between archaeological areas and parks and the following definition is made: “institutes and places of culture include museums, libraries and archives, archaeological areas and parks, monumental complexes”. An archaeological area is therefore considered as a site characterised by the presence of pre-historical or ancient fossil ruins or handmade products, whereas an archaeological park is considered as a territorial framework characterised by important archaeological ruins and historical, landscape or environmental values, equipped as an open-air museum. The archaeological interest, then, matches with the interest for the landscape, since environmental elements represent a key element of our cultural heritage. In this connection, it is important to refer to the European Landscape Convention, signed on 20.10.2000, representing the first international treaty exclusively concerning the protection, enhancement and management of the European landscape. The convention commits the governments to consider the landscape as a complex entity, deriving from the interaction of natural and anthropic factors, to be referred to the collective good, and to introduce management and enhancement tools, as well as the recovery of degraded landscape, going beyond the logic of protectionist safeguard.

At a regional level, on the contrary, regional law no. 24 of 2003 (and subsequent amendments) allows to include the archaeological sites within the Museum System of Umbria for the purposes of the overall enhancement of the cultural heritage.

The regional planning, furthermore, considers the integrated sectors of Tourism-Environment-Culture (Regional planning 2006-2008) as one of the factors for development. The strategy aims to the improvement of environmental compatibility of agricultural production, the strengthening of the growth in the agricultural and food sector, the development of sector enhancement of the regional excellence elements (such as the environmental and cultural assets), the handicraft, commercial and agricultural and food enhancement of resources, with the objective to promote a quality Umbria in an integrated way.

Any activity aiming to safeguard and protect cultural and environmental heritage envisages the cooperation between government levels (State, Regions, local authorities, etc…).

Action 4.2 - The point of start for the identification of a park is the selection of the asset on which performing an intervention and the planning towards the best use of the area. In the choice of what to enhance, no influence is made by monuments, but rather their socio-cultural representation is considered, on the basis of elements that strongly characterise the territory in question. Once the selection is made, an analysis of the objectives to achieve is made according to the target that the park is destined to. Subsequently, the characteristics, the architectural design and space arrangement are analysed, through the creation of educational paths, guided paths and various types of initiatives. Several elements represent our cultural, historical, artistic and naturalistic heritage, and they continuously evolve; it is therefore necessary to create a perfect balance between management and planning. The park becomes, then, a dynamic reality that integrates protection and conservation with enhancement, through innovative interventions aiming to the production of new stimuli.

A fundamental aspect for the life of a park is its use, in order to make the asset available to a large public and consequently to turn it into a cultural, tourist and economic resource, and this happens especially thanks to visual communication, that completes the work through the graphic organisation of the various products that are necessary for a best accessibility. Visual communication, then, includes the creation of publications and advertising materials as brochures, leaflets, guides, maps, road signs and boards to distribute along the path. In this way, visitors will have the opportunity to choose how to proceed in the visit, deciding whether limiting themselves to the merely visual aspect or deepening the knowledge through texts. This allows to establish evocations and allusions between the various graphic products, through a coordinated image, and to keep visitors concentrated on contents. Communication becomes inseparable from any other product since it silently calls attention, involves, conveys the message and leaves a memory.

Action 4.1

The archaeological park, as a form of enhancement of a monumental area, is a recent conquest. In fact, in the past, after the finding of any archaeological site, it was natural and obvious to take any decorative object away from the excavation and take it to museums, losing in this way the original link of the object itself with the monument, which in several cases was abandoned. This strongly reduced the logistic and framework understanding.

Today, on the contrary, the objective is the safeguard of places as a whole, in order to obtain an archaeological park that becomes the museum itself, in a combination of sites, spaces and infrastructures, preserving both assets and the habitat. Not all the sites, however, are suitable to this purpose, especially those that show relevant difficulties in terms of accessibility and maintenance.

The area selected to become a park is the one that, thanks to the presence of one or more sites considered as representative and rich in historical, scientific and cultural value, deserves protection and such an interest that may represent an open-air museum.