Luoghi di valore / Outstanding Places

The 749 nominations, collected in the six annual editions of the Outstanding Places project (2007-2012), recount the point of view of the single individuals and communities who live in the places nominated, with their various social and cultural backgrounds, daily needs, feelings and experiences of life. Hundreds of citizens, scores of public administrators, schools, associations, experts and scholars, contributed to the project, which has grown in scale over the years and aroused the interest of the international scientific community.
The contents of the nominations transcend the initiative’s narrow geographical scope. They constitute an extraordinary key to tackling wider questions of more universal dimension, beginning with that of the person/place and community/place relationship which, in various ways, has increasingly come to the fore as the essential ingredient of what Domenico Luciani, inventor of the project, has called “our own position in the world”.
As Joan Nogué writes in his Preface to the book, “Slowly and unobtrusively the idea is beginning to gain ground that a pleasant, harmonious environment creates an agreeable sense of wellbeing and considerably enhances people’s quality life […] It is on the move, on people’s lips: all that is needed is to listen to it, question it, give it voice, as in this case”.
There exist places that, in different degrees, are essential for our peacefulness, because they create a kind of link, a point of contact and interaction between global phenomena and the individual experience. Through places we give significance to the world and we move in it; or, to quote the words of Ippolito Pizzetti, it is precisely a place that “helps me to seek my access to the world”.