|
It is through collaboration within the framework
of the programme Culture 2000 that the Institute prepared a web
site on the dry stone in Europe with partners from Italy
(Alberobello), Greece (University of Mytilene) and Spain
(University of Tarragone).
This site aims as much at protecting fragile
architectures as at sensitising Europeans to a common heritage
whose techniques are likely to be lost, at inviting tourists to
check out ignored sites and to take into account a type of
fundamental landscape of Europe: that of the dry stone.
|
 |
Poster of the meeting of Tarrogona
 a cultural and natural space
"From the beginning of time, dry stone
constructions constituted an instrument of control and unification
of space. The stone constituted at the same time a natural form and
a manner of developing the natural environment while creating
specific relations between the members of the same community." This
is what Nicola Vernicos, one of the promoters of the project,
asserts.
It is indeed imperative to protect, preserve,
restore and transmit, in a circle of specialists, this unique
environment, but it seems quite as imperative to popularise,
discover, attract new views, in a circle extended to the tourists.
This is in itself a contradiction, on which it is necessary to work
in an enlarged Community in all Europe. In the ensemble of
Mediterranean landscapes, but more largely in all agricultural
civilisations that had to work while clashing with an often hard
and hostile ground, architectural solutions were developed
spontaneously, because of usage and geomorphological conditions.
They take comparable forms, based on solutions of economy and
utility, putting natural forces at the service of inhabitants, in a
form of development that one would describe today as "soft" or
"durable". The ecosystems thus created preserved the natural and
cultural space, protecting the species, delineating properties,
separating herds, while at the same time including the temporary or
residential dwelling place.
Mytilene island, Greece. Photo MTP
a memorandum
Farm in dry stone. Alberobello Region,
Italy. Photo MTP
|
This old fragile treasure is a true base of
civilisation, but even this fragility, just like the disappearance
of practical values that produced it, is threatened by the
disappearance of the bond with the past. A European Memorandum
prepared for this occasion constitutes from this point of view an
extremely useful work. It comes to supplement the charters and
conventions developed by international organisations, while
pointing at the fundamental element of our common heritage. The
European Institute of Cultural Routes and the Council of Europe
fully join this approach.
|
|
But the setting on line of a web site linked to
the portal of the Institute wishes both to advertise and to propose
courses, while working on the popularisation of these architectures
and on educating visitors, because cultural tourism founded on the
patrimony is always risky tourism, threatening with its pressure
those to whom it proposes the discovery.
|
City of Alberobello, Italy.
Photo MTP
|
|
The web site of the dry stone, just like the
conclusions of these European days, comes to fall under an
inexhaustible and long-term work that goes from the reconciliation
of European people to the education of young people, from
re-reading of the past to training a common citizenship.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 other web sites
|
|
|
|
documents
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
