The Resilience of the Valley of Temples Among Natural Calamities and Social Disasters

Abstract

Preservation of the cultural heritage, intended as common patrimony, is a cultural achievement that interritories like Sicily, which has often suffered the lack of legality, is the result of a difficult process ofimplementation. Cultural heritage is not ruined exclusively by natural calamities: damages caused bysocial and cultural disasters may at times be even more devastating.The archeological park of Agrigento, born in 1947 after a natural disaster (a landslide in 1944), hidesa history of a half century of battles between the illegal land use and legislative measures to protect acultural heritage recognized worldwide (registered in the WHL in 1997).After fifty years of attacks against the archaeological park, a slow process of collective re-appropriationof the Valley of Temples has begun since 2000. A law established by the Sicilian Region has launchedthis process; this law, unique in its genre, is finally producing long-awaited results.Herein, we describe battles lost and won, stakeholders took to the filed, failure and successes that,during the last decade, have transformed the Valley of Temples from a synonymous of illegality and unauthorizedbuilding into an example of excellent enhancement of the cultural heritage. In 2017, indeed,the archeological park has been awarded the Italyn Award for the Landscape and then brought up bythe Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage as candidate to represent Italy for the European Council Landscape Award.