Landscape: a polysemantic concept, expression of cultural identity

In recent years there has been growth in a movement of awareness and reflection aimed at the rediscovery and re-enhancement of the characteristics that define the physiognomy of a territory. This intellectual orientation has placed the concepts of “landscape”, “environment”, “territory” and the principle that these terms are not synonymous with each other at the centre of its reflections. This is a theoretical approach, which finds juridical foundation in the European Landscape Convention that became law on the 1stMarch 2004, adopted in Italy on the 9th January 2006. The European law also led to the promotion of actions to safeguard the figurative value and enjoyability of the territory for which it has identified words as the instrument with the appropriate requisites for highlighting the characteristics of a place and the people who inhabit it, even though this instrument of communication is often evasive and open to interpretation. This paper aims to contribute towards remedying the reduction of the concepts mentioned in EU landscape laws. In doing so, it looks towards a language based on an image that is the most easily legible and less open to interpretation than that in use at present for the process of translation and comprehension of the wealth of diversity and territorial complexity. This with the hope of facilitating, at all levels, the safeguarding of the territory and therefore of the landscape of the EU, which as a cultural patrimony belongs to all humanity.