Research notes on safeguarding architectural heritage: a proposed mode of operation for defining territorial buffer zones

What the gaze can embrace in an anthropized space is a sinuous carpet, dark and rough and with well-defined surfaces. The alternation of these elements marks the territory, it animates it with perspectives and life, and intensifies it in the balance of shadows and light, transforming it into a landscape. This case study’s field of research is therefore the landscape and the aim is to identify a way of scientifically defining territorial buffer zones for Man’s activity in order to avoid incongruences that sometimes arise when applying the present legislation. The research was based on the territory of Molise. An area with little tourism characterised by the presence of Samnite remains, was chosen as the study area, in part to indulge the wish to make the region’s more remote places known. The quantity of work fed by alternative logic made it possible to correlate the resulting data and create a possible operational method. The conclusions showed that the establishment a priori of parameters for buffer zones is not the right approach to obtaining the best results in that each site where history has left its mark is unique and visual capacity, orography and volume of vegetation play an important role. On the contrary, working in coordination with these entities produces an acceptable outcome both for the conservation of cultural resources and for improving what can be offered to tourists, without blocking them in a static context that represents neither the past nor the present and, above all, denies the future.