Viability, Sustainability and Challenges for Puglia Region and Salento, as a Key for Cultural  Tourism Development for the  Mediterranean Regions

An Expert Workshop to be Conducted by Members of the: UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on: Culture, Tourism & Development.

29-30-31 October 2015, Lecce – Corigliano d’Otranto - Alberobello, Italy
Department of Cultural Heritage - University of Salento. Lecce (Italy)

 

Background:

The Puglia region, in the deep South of Italy, is an important bridge between central-northern Italy and the countries of the Mediterranean.

The Salento, the peninsular which forms the heel of the Italian boot,  jutting out between the Adriatic and the Ionian seas towards, boasts a vibrant  economy (mainly agriculture and handicraft) and is rich in history and culture.

- In the Salento  the tourism is an economic  sector whose development has been relatively recent with the dominance of beach-oriented tourism.

- The region is highly rich with heritage sites representing a large variety of historical and cultural assets which may well leverage cultural tourism development.

- However, this region has been facing a complex disadvantages, constraints and difficulties that hamper its ability to manage those sites in an efficient manner and to make them. recognized as outstanding cultural assets by Mediterranean and international standards.

- To a large extent, due to the locational, functional, economic and political disadvantages, heritage sites in Puglia become an example of Mediterranean negligence and un-sustainable cultural tourism development.

- Its dual peripheral location (within Italy and within the Mediterranean basin) and all the disadvantages associated with it pave the way for further deterioration of tangible heritage and a waist of potentially important economic assets that can be generated through much stronger cultural and heritage tourism sector.

The aim of the proposed workshop:

- To expose to the expert  team of the UNESCO – UNITWIN Network on “Culture, Tourism & Development” some sites in Puglia region and  Salento  that can have important  role  in the development of cultural tourism in the Mediterranean regions.

- To brainstorm on how the Puglia region and Salento  can generate solutions to the above problems and to bypass obstacles that hamper these sites’ ability to sustainably develop cultural tourism.

- To produce policy and practical guidelines on how to attain the goal of sustainable cultural tourism development based on sites which have already been declared or area which have the pretension of becoming inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Properties.

Proposed case study: Salento

Objective: Identify the main issues and strategies to enable a successful inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Methodology: we met several local stakeholders, and visited the sites that have been identified by the organizers of this workshop as the most representative and important.

Precedents: a previous project of UNESCO candidacy had been prepared in the past, focalizing on the Leccese barocco (as cultural landscape). The goal of the workshop was to evaluate that previous strategy, and eventually to suggest endorsing it or recommending an alternative one.