Fortress town of Palmanova: Actions on the driver of cultural values: designing contemporary borders enhancing overall landscape quality and identity

In 2017, the defense system built by the Venice's fortifications department for the military town of Palmanova, came under the protection of the national legislation concerning cultural heritage and was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The site consists of a military border that defines the inner part of the city as an autonomous element that stands out from the landscape with its strong formal identity. Outside the citadel, the huge size of the ramparts, surrounded by empty spaces, identifies monumental thickness as a mix made by water and earth. This duality represents the genetic code of the city, the result of a difficult agreement between nature and human construction. At the beginning of the 2000s, the decommissioning of barracks inside the city, resulted in a significant increasing of large empty spaces, that have been abandoned, waiting for new urban forms. More recently, the increasing tourism weakened the former, absolute resistance of the ramparts forming the boundary. Then, it’s time to rethink and reinterpret the meaning of these elements, which have no longer a defensive role. These contemporary borders can therefore become threshold-spaces connecting infrastructures, resilient and green, used by all citizens. Thinking about creative reuses and over-writings won’t alter landscape perception, nor prevent transmission of historical memory, and will allow to start new processes of environmental regeneration of urban and territorial forms.