Il paesaggio di pietra nella Lessinia occidentale

The stone’s landscape of western Lessinia In the last few years, topics related to the mountain and its environment have seen a renewed interest after years of neglect. The concept of mountain, the establishment of parks and protected areas, the protection and conservation of fragile ecosystems, the management of marginal areas with the activity of the mountain communities are just some of the fields that are now being studied in several disciplines as well as economic and political confrontation. Among the themes, that are mainly directing the national and international scientific community, are emerging the cultural identity, some landscape contexts and the peculiar territories layout that for centuries have held in equilibrium a particularly fragile hydro-geological environment. The input that led to investigate the stone’s landscape was certainly the incessant and widespread emphasis on the problematic nature of the landscape, broadly conceived, at different scales. Oversized interventions, planning not appropriated to the context, overbuilding and overcrowding of stereotyped building have triggered a disintegration of landscape areas a time homogeneous, and now reduced to"soulless" inform assemblies. As a consequence there is now a strong need to analyze, know, understand and work for a new awareness of the values of harmony of the landscape intended as an unrepeatable whole, completely different from the others, as it is a secular product of the human-environment interaction. Such attitude is far from repeating the mistakes of the past and more specifically it aims to defend, govern and enhance areas of acknowledged amenity value, areas too often forgotten. The renewed research for a more correct relationship between the environment and the communities has produced an interest in those "lost landscapes", evidences of values nearly always in contrast to those proposed by the lifestyles of today's world, but not yet protagonists of a shared collective memory. The research aimed to focus on specific character of the landscape, which marked the area not only with its physical elements but also with many cultural aspects, starting from the language. The unifying and identifying element is the stone of Prun, a resource that people were able to use in many different social and economic fields. It is a landscape that still today in its forms and uses reflects traditional ways of life, though suffering some cases of abandonment and degradation. The path taken in the study of the stone’s landscape started from the area of production of the lithoid material. The quarry in fact, turns out to be not just a simple place of extraction of material, but it becomes an intrinsic part of a landscape (yesterday, with quarries in tunnel; today, with quarries in open air), due to the gashes that stand out on the surface slopes. The stone, according to the size of plates, the tone of colours, the use of segments, characterises all the constructive components on the bases of interest / use / purpose, and therefore these products have been divided into building, social, productive, cultural and devotion elements, pointing out the historical, cultural, geographical, economic and human aspects. The last part of the research considers the stone as cultural landscape and through the close examination of the legislative measures it attempts to verify a possible protection, conservation and recovery, including the description of some specific cases. The resource, called stone of Prun, is extracted in three municipalities (Sant'Anna d'Alfaedo, Negrar and Fumane) but its distribution expands over a vast range that tends to grow even on an international scale thanks to the ability of exploiting the material with modern technology. The evolution of the landscape through the demographic, settlement, economic and social changes was inquired on numerous local references, but the survey of the existing literature was accompanied by numerous field trips, in order to search elements capable to make understand the diversity of uses in the uniformity of the material. In the process of research it is essential to explore the studied area, meet and communicate with people who daily live immersed in this landscape as they can convey the importance of the stone, witness of identity rooted values that are still defended.