ABSTRACT
Within a wide range of meanings generally associated with the word landscape, both in the scientific context – in a field in itself transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary – and in common language (Zerbi 1993; Zanetto et al. 1996; Pedroli et al. 2006; Minca 2007; Papotti 2008), an influential shared meaning is today that of ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’. This definition opens the European Landscape Convention, a key document to all those who are interested in landscape, both in terms of study and research, management and administration, sensitization and valorization. Such a conception of landscape emphasizes the necessary involvement of populations in what concerns landscape, no longer considered as an objective datum but as a result of perception. Values, meanings and the whole realm of the immaterial are therefore essential parts of the relationship which binds the population itself to the territory.
