Italy - The Cultural Landscape of Civita di Bagnoregio

There are places where the interplay between endogenous factors and morphogenetic agents builds up enchanting landscapes, suspended in a delicate condition between being an environmental resource or a natural hazard. When such places are also settled by the human presence, the final interaction is absolutely unique. In Central Italy, past geodynamic and volcanic events together with the modelling of more recent exogenous processes have produced spectacular wide table landforms, like plateaus and smaller mesas and buttes, characteristic throughout the whole area. These mesas and buttes became shortly favourite and confortable sites for human settlements and, in times, for secure and defensible historic towns. Such ancient and often precious urban centres are continuously affected by natural hazards such as landslides that threaten their survival due to the strong geomorphological activity. The resulting scenery, where human modifications contrast and overlap the natural landforms acquires the value of a Cultural Landscape. The town of Civita di Bagnoregio (Latium Region, Central Italy) — located at the border of the ancient Volsini volcano and placed on a high tuff peak that rests on fragile clay — is an exceptional example of preserved medieval village where successive cultural layers produced a harmonious ensemble of red tiled stone masonry buildings and stone paved narrow streets, set in a dramatically fragile and unstable environment. Civita is a stunning case where the human presence has tried for centuries to hinder the natural degradation of the cliff. It is a paradigm of the struggle of men aiming to survive in a hostile, though incomparably beautiful, environment, and nature that wants to take its course dismantling and eroding all reliefs. The town, of Etruscan or Villanovian origins (7th century BC), had a great expansion from the Roman Age to the late Middle Age, when the quarters Ponte and Carcere, (that have now disappeared) where added to the original urban nucleus. Topographical and cadastral maps, dating back to the beginning of the 18th century as well as other historical maps and documents, prove the progressive shortening of the cliff due to landslides that have caused, in different times, the destruction of portions of the town built on the cliff edge. Many historical records on occurred landslides and stabilisation works, since 1373 AD, have been collected and analysed in order to reconstruct in detail the evolution of the urban setting and cliff, where landslides repeating continuously throughout the valley are creating an ever-changing landscape that looks different every day.