The protection of Italian cultural landscape through its legislative system

The paper starts from the cultural landscape definition adopted by the Mediterranean Landscape Chart and by the European Landscape Convention in order to search the origins of cultural landscape conservation and to point out the differences occurred since its origin; cultural landscape’s meaning changes through the time by the mean of a different scale of values. The method to analyze the development and changes in the cultural landscape conservation is based on the analysis of the legislative system. The paper describes how the approach to cultural landscape conservation has changed through the time; in an early stage, from the end of nineteenth century up to the middle of twentieth century, it has been imposed from central government as cultural value worth to be preserved beyond any other issue. From the second half of twentieth century a new process has started: cultural landscape conservation has been associated to planning. Such process has been completed in the twenty-first century as prefectures and provinces are now in charge of enhancement and promotion of the landscape. The paper in the conclusion focuses on the importance of achieving cultural landscape conservation by the promotion of local identity; only with the understanding and cooperation of its population it is possible to cooperate with positive actions and to contrast those against cultural landscape conservation.