Cultural itineraries and slow paths. Historical and environmental resources for territorial planning

In recent decades, the landscape paradigm has defined a new approach to conserving and managing the cultural heritage, starting specifically with a change of scale, which now takes into account not only the single elements of cultural heritage but also the heritage in its context, i.e., territorial, social, cultural and economic. Cultural itineraries are described in this framework-in their wide, complex meaning-as a network that connects historical structures, territorial elements, and landscapes (i.e., ancient towns, historical buildings, routes and paths, rivers and valleys, ...). Furthermore, cultural itineraries lead to the possibility of interpreting and developing new meanings for cultural heritage, even rethinking their roles related to contemporary landscapes and contemporary values. From these premises, cultural itineraries also become a strategic objective of urban and territorial planning, since they are linked to territorial improvement and allow for new models of governance to be experimented with and innovative scenarios of sustainable development to be defined. This paper explores the meanings of cultural itineraries by studying the landscapes of the Lauretana pilgrimage route, a historical route that winds across central Italy through a network of paths leading from Rome to Loreto. It explores the relationship between ancient modes of travel and the contemporary way of slow walking, and it shows the relationship between cultural and territorial networks as well as ecological and environmental ones.