The Bosco di Sant’Antonio
The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens, 2012
edited by Domenico Luciani and Patrizia Boschiero, with Francesco Sabatini
cover price 18 euros
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Antiga Edizioni
Treviso 2012
112 pages, 81 illustrations in colour and 19 black and white
ISBN 978-88-97784-12-8
Italian edition, ISBN 978-88-88997-89-6
Our efforts were directed at trying to understand the form and life of a place. To provide an account of its interminable geological and biological existence, a history of the transformations wrought by human hand, of the life-threatening risks that repeatedly loomed over it during the XX century and of the battles fought to ensure its protection. We tried to ponder its present state and contemplate its future prospects. So we published archival documents, studies by scholars and statements by those responsible for the woods, a wide range of complex but usefully comparable positions, maintaining constant reference to the unifying cultural inspiration of the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens. The publication is therefore the result of scrupulously scientific work and editorial effort with important contributions.
This marvellous place comprises several thousand large trees, five hundred of which are ancient beech trees, woodland pasture (bosco difesa) covering about a hundred hectares not far from Pescostanzo in the mountains of Abruzzo. It is a living testimony to an agricultural-sylvan-pastoral civilization moulded directly by its relationship with nature, with its own historical and spiritual dimensions. A crucible of knowledge, technical skills, arts, crafts, rules and practices born of long tradition but presenting us with economic and anthropological questions that are crucially relevant to our own time.
Starting from this particularly exceptional case, the focus widens to explore the general subject of woods and their nature as symbolic landscapes, their changing meaning and role in the arduous attempts at reconciliation with nature that our current sensibility seems, if for no other reason than to survive, to have embarked on. With their variety of character and use and their long-standing value as statutorily regulated common property, woods present us with a simple explanation of how their conservation and their renewal presupposes constant care and maintenance and far-sighted community stewardship.
Contents
The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens, 1990-2012, 4
Regulations and Jury, 5
Bosco di Sant’Antonio. Jury report, 8
Keeping faith by Pasquale Del Cimmuto, Mayor of Pescocostanzo, 19
Woods and pastures, meadows and tilled fields of the Municipality of Pescocostanzo, edited by Domenico Luciani, 21
Luigi Hermanin, Bosco di Sant’Antonio, 25
Mauro Agnoletti, The features and present state of the historical landscape of Italy, 30
Gianfranco Pirone and Giampiero Ciaschetti, The vegetation of the Bosco di Sant’Antonio, 33
The protection of the Bosco di Sant’Antonio in the Majella National Park, edited by Simonetta Zanon, 42
Aurelio Manzi, The ancient difese and the use of woodland in the highlands of Abruzzo, 44
Francesco Sabatini, Pescocostanzo: a complex system of nature and culture, 57
Inventory of the Church of Sant’Antonio in Primo Campo (1697), edited by Gaetano Sabatini in 1932, note and selection by Ezio Mattiocco, 68
Ezio Mattiocco, The Campora: a coveted land, 72
Massimo Rossi, The woodlands of Pescocostanzo from “Difesa” to “Bosco di Sant’Antonio”, 79
Summary of events surrounding the Bosco di Sant’Antonio during the XX century, by Domenico Luciani, 89
Bibliography consulted, 97
Maps available, 106
List of illustrations, 107
International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens 2012, 108
