From Architectural Restoration to Heritage Preservation: new plan to conserve and manage cultural landscapes, historic centers and districts in Italy

With a new perspective of the value of the past, the preservation domain is being enlarged by a radical increase in the types of artefacts being considered worthy of protection and conservation: in addition to monumental high-style architecture - traditionally the preservation concern - whole new categories of sites are now recognized as equally meritorious: cultural and natural landscapes, historic towns and villages, vernacular and industrial structures, etc. The urban and landscape preservation specificity is not only a question of scale, but also of methodological approach: we must study our territory as a continuum of diffused cultural sites and not as a simple container of single buildings of historical interest isolated from their environmental context (see Alois Riegl who said in 1902 “every monument is a document and every document is a monument”). Particularly this paper analyses: the evolution of historic preservation in Italy as a grown cultural process (from the protection of few monumental works of architecture to the preservation of urban districts, and indeed whole historic towns, cultural landscapes and historic sites); the heritage preservation laws and agencies in Italy, examining the current approaches and instruments aimed at the identification and preservation of territorial cultural sites, like historic centers rehabilitation plans, cultural landscape guidelines, Colour Plans (Piani del Colore), urban restoration rules, conservation practices lately issued in Italy. The paper is focused on conservation and management of architectural heritage often not protected by preservation national laws with the goal to define guidelines and standards to survey historic sites and features, read cultural and architectural values and analyse decay and alteration problems in order to reach a proper approach to preserve, rehabilitate and manage this historic heritage defining specific conservation treatments and plans.