Liguria

Abstract

In Emilio Sereni’s 1961 pioneering study, the agrarian landscapes of Liguria are hardly mentioned. In general, however, after its French and English translations, Sereni’s text has become a mandatory reference in Europe for any discussion of the Italian rural landscape. This does not hold for the more scientific and technical studies (lacking any an historical approach), which, starting from the mid-1970s, have continuously inspired the legislation of the Liguria region on its cultural, scenic and environmental heritage. As a consequence, years of careful management of a mosaic of historical rural landscape, exercised in various post-agricultural forms, have been obscured by a simplistic approach aimed at ‘re-naturalizing’ the land by the legislation on regional natural parks (but also by that on forests). The problem is even more notable if we consider that woods occupy a surface of 69 %, while agricultural surface is only 11.5 %, figures strongly influenced by the forestation that has occurred following the abandoning of agricultural and pastoral activities in the twentieth century. In regards to the regional landscape plans, the legislation has been excellent, but as far as concerns the rural landscape and heritage it continues to disregard the lesson of Sereni. In Sereni’s 1961 study there were a few references to the development of the ‘Genoan villa’ in the sixteenth century and possibly to the model of the Mediterranean semi-urban huertas but, fatally, there was no image documenting in any way the agrarian landscape of Liguria. Yet, Sereni must have known this landscape. Indeed, his previous 1955 study was paradoxically focused on Liguria and its rural communities in classic antiquity, and here Sereni found time to prove himself also as landscape photographer. Why then this invisibility of the rural landscape of Liguria?