The 70% of the Italian settlements is of villages with less than 5,000 inhabitants, almost all of which have a historical centre of medieval origin. In Italy in the twentieth century, society and the economy quickly passed from a mercantilist model, rooted in local knowledge, to capitalism and liberalism, open to the globalization of markets: this has led many villages to suffer of depopulation phenomena, lack of services and physical degradation.
However, the city is a combination of urbe and civitas, the physical place and the people, social relations, the economy: without inhabitants, towns cannot survive or regenerate, any intervention from the outside is therefore doomed to fail. It is necessary to study the traditional, vernacular architecture of the Mediterranean in search of strategies for their rebirth, while also finding solutions for the problems of modern cities.
This video was made by Massimo Castelli with the support of Caffé Guglielmo
© 2022 Guglielmo Minervino