The transformations of the urban image and identity of the natural and historical landscape affected both the intangible and the tangible heritage. The representations of such changing realities has led, over time, to different perceptions of the past and also to various conservative and/or instrumental practices of architecture in order to transmit the memory. This paper proposes, in a trans-disciplinary perspective and taking in account the overabundant (and sharing) spread of images thank to new technologies, the investigation of the relationships between the traditional and contemporary media – including photography, cinematography and the new media – and the recording of the characteristics of temporary dimension, which influence the conservation and the fruition modes of such fading landscapes.

Nel cuore della regione abruzzese, che ha mantenuto fino ai primi del Novecento le caratteristiche di un ambiente insediativo difficile e scarsamente collegato con l’esterno, nasce il fiume Aterno dal quale ha origine l’omonima valle lungo la quale si attestarono i percorsi viari ed i principali insediamenti centro-meridionali a partire dalla prima urbanizzazione romana. Le prime informazioni esplicite sull’assetto paesaggistico si hanno nel XIX sec. con le descrizioni dei pochi viaggiatori che si avventurarono nella valle disegnata dalla trama dei campi aperti e dalle distese pascolive incorniciate dai promontori mentre i centri abitati rappresentavano sporadiche interruzioni di tale armoniosa organizzazione territoriale. Questa pittoresca immagine sarà costantemente minata, a partire dalla seconda metà del XX secolo, da un drastico processo di trasformazione che sta celermente frammentando il paesaggio aquilano in una serie di patches disposte in maniera isolata e caotica sul territorio.

The cultural heritage of the centers of Abruzzo and, particularly, that belonging to the areas of Marsica and L’Aquila, both interested by two of the most important seismic events from the beginning of the 20th century – the earthquakes of Avezzano (1915) and L’Aquila (2009) – provides the opportunity to reflect on the dynamics of transformation of an historical landscape severely damaged, as well as on the features that the media – which allow to perpetuate their memory – could take. Taking into account the possibility to interpret the characteristics of the large amount of photographic documentations produced after these events, the paper aims at defining a comparison between ‘deferred’ identities, as well as at providing an original interpretation which defines a double interpretative level linked, on one hand, to the description of the ‘contextuality’ of the signs of the traumatic event and, on the other hand, to the sedimentation of the image of an heritage characterized by tangible and intangible stratifications.

Alba Fucens, today the hamlet of Massa d'Alba, province of L’Aquila, was an ancient Roman city, founded in the 4th century BC. Surrounded by a landscape of “natural and unlimited grandeur” (Brandi 1957), the settlement remains were the subject of picturesque representations as early as the 19th century, but have received study and systematic archaeological excavation only since World War II. After the abandonment of the Roman colony, exposed to Barbarian attacks, medieval Alba (literally “dawn”) rose in the 11th century on the nearby hill, facing the current archaeological site. The settlement is dominated by the monumental Orsini-Colonna castle, in counterpoint to the beautiful Church of San Pietro, build on the Italic-Roman Temple of Apollo, and reconstructed after the earthquake of 1915. The architectural facies of the medieval village is depicted in poetic relationship with the landscape in the views of Edward Lear, admirer of the ''Abruzzo picturesque". These, along with vintage photos, provide the original image of the settlement, destroyed by the earthquake of 1915 and rebuilt, with disarming homogeneity among the little anti-seismic houses, almost in continuity with the Roman ruins. Alba Fucens is a charming historical, architectural and landscape “palimpsest”, the result of little known ancient and modern stages, still waiting to be interpreted and enhanced.

The Touring Club Italiano was founded in 1894. Throughout the 20th century it played a major role in promote and protect Italy’s cultural, historical and environmental heritages, rightly viewed as irreplaceable assets to be preserved for future generations. It would be no exaggeration to claim that from the turn of the century onwards, the Touring had a significant part to play in the construction of Italian national identity that had begun in the wake of the Risorgimento but had not yet coalesced under political unification, while encouraging the moral, intellectual and social development in the middle class. By using tools closely connected with travel (guidebooks, maps, road signs), and by working closely with public bodies responsible for tourism promotion, the Touring created an aesthetic and structural lens through which Italy continues to be observed and discovered by its inhabitants.

New media and technologies are offering the ability to access and use iconographic historical sources in a way that have no antecedent and proportions. Thanks to the internet it’s possible to share information of different types, increasing available data on the place. Memory sharing prefigures the past and the present, giving the opportunity to outline the, future, reshaping it. The paper investigate dynamics generated by new technologies in urban process through mechanisms still unexplored of awareness of the potential of a place. In this context, web-based applications creates a renewed interaction between population, landscape and territorygenerating new ways of understanding it and promoting new uses and multi-actor practices.

Human beings have always been linked with specific geographical areas, through familiarity with the landscape characteristics, self-recognition within place, feelings of belonging, and emplacement of cultures and traditions. The individual buildings of the area in turn have specific characteristics: linkages between structure and site through unwritten rules and codes, and inheritances of traditional construction techniques and the use of local materials. Learning to recognize a landscape requires a multi-disciplinary approach, and highlights the intrinsic connection between buildings and environmental characteristics. Today, buildings can be used as a valuable natural resource, in particular as “energy resources”, built in direct continuity with the landscape itself, and anticipating the logic of the sustainability. The authors describe this approach to construction through some case studies.

Printing techniques of the nineteenth century allow a new, widespread and affordable distribution to ‘educational propaganda’ publications and its related information. Among these, the communications of landscape is offered with the visual storytelling that combines texts and pictures inside Le Cento Città d’Italia, by Sonzogno publishing house. In this collection, the use of image become a fundamental support for the reader’s mental representation, while facilitating the transition from imagination to imagine, from narrated to represented. There can be found different interpretation and description of 'landscape': the panorama, now extricated from the eighteenth century cylindrical representation, the urban landscape and the panoramic view, with improper synonymy sometime defined landscape. They conclude with the socio-political one, defined from editorial choices aimed at enhancing awareness of, at that time, Italy ‘under construction’.

The paper considers the alterations to the lower valley of the Tronto River (province of Ascoli Piceno, region of the Marche) in the 19th and the 20th century. The process of landscape transformation is documented by archival documents, and by photographs portraying the works of the Consorzio di Bonifica. The photographs attest to the technical efforts for the rearrangement of the local orographic and hydraulic systems, for purposes of agricultural development. The study first examines the irreversible modifications to the river's flow rate, primarily through comparison to the previous situation, as described in the Pius-Gregorian cadastral maps. The study then examines how these engineering strategies transformed the rural landscape, at that time still linked to ancient traditions, into a "planned" area characterized by intensive farming, and where new residential and industrial districts were also built as the decades progressed.