Piedmont

Abstract

Piedmont holds the Italian record for the oldest ‘Landscape Museum’. In Verbania, on Lake Maggiore, a museum with this official denomination exists since 1914 (recognized the Ministry of Public Education from the start). In 1988, the Museum has created its own research Center for Landscape Studies. In the context of the problem of identifying rural landscapes of historical interest in Piedmont, the important tradition of the museum of Verbania bears witness to the difficult of scientifically cataloging the landscapes and therefore of laying down the guidelines for their protection. The museum is evidence of a visual conception of the landscape that has characterized for almost a century, and continues to characterize, the culture of the institutions responsible for the study, protection and promotion of the landscape, a culture that has spread from the center to the periphery, from the State to the Regions all the way down to local institutions. A corollary of this well-known conception is that rural landscape, if taken at all into consideration, is interpreted as an extension of the ‘landscape of villas and gardens’, a view of the territory that reflects a pictorial conception, i.e., landscape as depicted in landscape painting. This conception, however, is an obstacle to the actual identification of rural landscapes in the region and is also unjustified from the perspective of the promotion of the regional heritage, considering that actual ‘guides’ to the rural landscape of the hills around Turin, for example in relation to viticulture and the accompanying settlements, were already available at the end of the eighteenth century, if not in the previous century, if we interpret from the perspective of the landscape the substantial regional literature on agriculture.