Restauri di frontiera: per un recupero del paesaggio rurale e delle sue "cattedrali"

It’s a matter of fact that historic rural architectures can be considered essential part of the Italian cultural heritage because of their precious architectural, historical and environmental values. Despite its fundamental role, it is rarely protected by specific laws and it is largely abandoned and partially ruined, also as a result of the last century intensive farming and the consequent lifestyle change. Indeed, the definition of “rural heritage” involves necessarily a deep interaction between social and formal aspects, which together determine the structural organization of the buildings, gathering local and vernacular characteristics substantially derived from as many functional and economic managements of the territory. All these aspects together have contributed in creating a number of rural "cathedrals" in those which can be considered as many “border landscapes”. Moreover, last seismic events dramatically evidenced the weakness of these “border cathedrals”. Despite they are located in an area – the Italian territory – with a very high seismic risk, often they don’t present any proper anti-seismic device and this poses a serious threat to their preservation. In this work, the results of a research carried out during the last years on a significant number of historic rural buildings in the Emilian area, are presented in order to draw up specific guidelines for their conservation. Indeed, despite its heterogeneity, this special heritage shows some recurring structures and shapes – “rural architectural types” – with similar structural behaviour and seismic damage: exactly this similarity, if properly investigated, can lead to set up reliable strategy of conservation and “border restoration”.