Early medieval Benedictine settlements and monastic landscape in Italy. A shared path and a case study

The UNESCO nomination process of Early medieval Benedictine settlements and monastic landscapes in Italy represents an opportunity for the preservation and the cultural promotion of a global heritage originating in Italy. This heritage stands out for a strong relationship between the intangible cultural phenomenon and its influence on the material shaping and arrangement of natural places and architectural spaces in Medieval Europe. The monastic landscape reveals its multiple facets and meanings: a natural, specific environment inspiring the anchoretic life and favoring monastic settlement; and a cultural landscape, shaped by the coenobitic organization of space and marked by the territorial arrangement of the anthropic settlements. The benedictine landscape, intended as a “contaminated” natural environment, emerges as a palimpstest to be preserved in its authenticity of the becoming. The monastery of San Michele della Chiusa offers a relevant case study, due to the contamination between the two extremes of anthropic landscape: the early medieval monastic one, which forms the backbone of the ancient domain of the abbots; and the Modern industrial one that determined the phisical and conceptual bases of the current connective layer. Abandoned after the seventeenth century and recovered by the late Romantic Culture as a picturesque place of neo-medieval fantasies, the monastery takes on a peculiar role of intangible heritage, assuming the role of a brilliant historical beacon with respect to the surrounding diachronic landscape. These elements, with their contaminations and contradictions, need to accounted for in any rereading of the historical environment according to a cultural landscape management plan.