Luca Simone Rizzo

Religious heritage in Italy: websites and geolocalization. A new appraisal

Al giorno d’oggi la creazione, l’archiviazione, l’accessibilità, interoperabilità dei dati sul web sono sempre più pervasive. Sul web vengono pubblicate diverse tipologie di basi di dati e/o geo-database e altre forme di informazioni fornite dalla rete – che affrontano vari argomenti (scienza, medicina, trasporti, turismo ...) e sulla base di diverse architetture. Tali banche dati possono essere private o pubbliche, con accesso gratuito o a pagamento. In ogni caso l’argomento dati è un campo continuo di riflessioni (Capineri, 2015). Un database di dimensioni significative è quello della Chiesa cattolica italiana. Si tratta di un inventario dei beni mobili o immobili su tutto il territorio italiano. Chiunque può avere interesse a questo tipo di informazioni (ad esempio istituzioni e singole persone). Questo contributo si propone di trattare l’informazione geografica concentrandosi sui siti religiosi in un periodo in cui il turismo religioso è considerato come una risorsa importante per l’industria del turismo, per lo sviluppo regionale/locale e non solo (Rizzo, 2016). Siti web con basi di dati sul patrimonio religioso saranno oggetto di indagine al fine di capire come collegare i dati religiosi (ad esempio chiese, monasteri, luoghi di pellegrinaggio, santuari ...) con informazioni geografiche e spaziali. Le suddivisioni religiose sono diverse da quelle secolari: in Italia, ad esempio, le diocesi hanno confini diversi rispetto alle province italiane, così come le regioni ecclesiastiche sono diverse da quelle amministrative. Nowadays the creation, storage, accessibility, and interoperability of data on the internet are more and more pervasive. Many different kinds of databases and/or geo-databases are published on the internet, along with other forms of information that deal with various topics (e.g. science, medicine, transport and tourism), based on different architectures. These websites can be private or public, and with or without free access. However, the reflection is ongoing on these data (Capineri, 2015). A significantly-sized database is that of the Italian Catholic Church. It concerns an inventory of its movable or immovable property throughout the entire Italian territory. Anyone could be interested in accessing this kind of information (e.g. institutions and individuals). This contribution intends to deal with geographical information focusing on the religious sites in a period in which religious tourism is considered a significant asset for the tourism industry, for regional/ local development, and more (Rizzo L.S., 2016). Databases about religious heritage are investigated in order to understand how they link religious data (e.g. churches, monasteries, sites of pilgrimage, sanctuaries) with geographical and spatial information. Religious subdivisions are different from secular ones: in Italy, for example, dioceses have different boundaries than the Italian provinces, and ecclesiastical regions sometimes differ from administrative regions.

Land-use and Landscape Changes: A Methodological Proposal for the Creation of Sustainable Cultural Tourism Itineraries

The debate on the role of itineraries as instruments of territorial valorisation is now ‘mature’ (Trono and Oliva 2013; Candela et al. 2005). More and more ‘territories’ are organizing activities to design and create new itineraries, convinced that they can act as a driving force for local development. By linking places, atmospheres or assets, they provide the keys, for understanding the ‘places’, and their evolution, to a growing number of ‘new tourists’. It becomes, however, a priority to carry out an evaluation of the territorialization processes that characterize the areas that they ‘touch’ (in particular land use); this is in order to determine their impact on the state of health of the territory being ‘crossed’. Current technological evolution has allowed us to go beyond the classical statistical analyses based on the calculation of indicators, integrating them with geospatial analyses capable of including what is mentioned above. Here, we propose the illustration of a case study conducted on this subject, which is presented as a working model. In 2013–2014, the research team carried out a diachronic (visual and overlay) GIS analysis. Our aim was to represent the changes taking place in the territory to the east of Verona, quantify them and evaluate the feasibility of the proposal for an itinerary in the conceptual stage, partly in the light of urban development planning. The case study has the value of substantiating the need to reflect on the often absent relationship between environmental and territorial research, and the development strategy related to it.