SIMONETTA ZANON Notes on the geohistorical nature of Veneto region landscapes (abstract)
The Veneto is a geographic and historical area consisting of widely differing cultural landscapes and places. Each of them is to be found on a specific hydrogeological platform, is home to identifiable biological microcosms and is the result of recognisable events, visible evidence, signs and meanings that can be read through available archaeological and archival records with unusual contents and distribution.
Despite their marked diversity these places all have in common a dense stratification of nature and memory (at least two thousand years). They have all gone through long periods under management cultures and unitary juridical civilisations. Furthermore, today they are all subject to bitter tensions and contradictions between consumerism and protection, dispersion and enhancement, while seeking difficult and continually new balances between demand of use of the territory, demand of environmental sustainability and demand of form of landscape.
The basic features of these landscapes emerge when observing the mosaic of places that make up our region. For convenience the following ten points may be used to carry out a survey that simultaneously identifies issues, periods and places.
1. Geomorphological and hydrogeological invariants. The physical environment. 2. First protohistoric settlements. 3. Settlements and infrastructures in Roman times. 4. Conditions of the territory and the landscape in the early Middle Ages. Notes on monasticism. 5. The late Middle Ages and the first important transformation. Historic centres of the Veneto region. 6. Humanism and the Renaissance. Town civilisation. Water civilisation. 7. Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Protocapitalist development. Venetian rule. 8. Nineteenth century. Railway. Land. Agriculture. “Bell towers”. 9. Twentieth century (first half). Electricity. Land reclamation. Wars. 10. Twentieth century (second half). Nebula-like settlement/extended city. Prospects. Issues.
