The alpine landscape as a heritage object
Observing the alpine landscape as a heritage object means reconstructing its aesthetic history, understanding those meanings and values that, over time, have led to its growing patrimonialization. A short history after all: it is in fact only since the second half of the eighteenth century that the Alps become, thanks to the scientific and artistic research, the object of aesthetic perception by European urban societies. A cultural and aesthetic construct that, starting from Haller and Rousseau, through Ruskin and other authors, goes as far as modern Alpine architecture. With a basic ambivalence: the immutability that the European aesthetic gaze has always conferred to the Alps, despite the continuous transformation and mutability of the Alpine landscape in real processes. The value of the Alps as a heritage, paradoxically depends, above all on the heritage still to be built, where this verb has primarily a conceptual value. The policies that automatically define the totality of the Alps as a heritage are not only actually impossible, but tend to create wastelands. The real care of the Alpine heritage therefore lies in its permanent reinvention.
