Réflexions sur les tremblements de terre, abandons et identité à travers quelques études de cas en Irpinia

Irpinia is a territory characterized by a strong landscape, urban and cultural identity and, at the same time, subject to a strong seismic risk due to the high seismicity of the area as its frequent earthquakes demonstrate. An internal area that suffers from a continuous cultural distortion due to the recurrence of reconstruction processes and the territorial, urban and architectural structure that differs from the characteristics of that specific landscape. For all these reasons it represents an important observatory aimed at mitigating environmental risk due to the abandonment of the historic centers which it has been witnessing for years with the disappearance of the communities that live there and with the progressive degradation of the monumental heritage that affects many of its interesting medieval villages. The landscape identity is still made up of spaces of great naturalistic value that unites all the settlements of the territory, scattered with numerous small villages perched around the medieval castle and delimited by the waterways that flow at its feet, characteristic for their simple stone houses uniformly leaning against each other that draw the planimetric trend of the streets, from the churches with the soaring bell towers, the alleys, its ancient portals in stone worked with skillful skill by the local stonemasons and by the square center of social life and center of the urban structure where the facades of the most representative noble palaces are concentrated. This is how the image of the small crib towns of the province of Avellino appears, a tangible testimony of a material culture built on the peasant civilization and consolidated by a secular history that originates from the distant Middle Ages. The greatest risk that occurs in the event of disasters, is that related to the loss of historical evidence, in its broadest sense, which affects both the individual monument or the work of art, as well as the entire urban center, even extending to the surrounding natural landscape. On this geomorphologically varied territory, the signs left by seismic events (1930, 1962, 1980) are still visible, particularly inclement, and by reconstruction interventions. These traces clearly show the signs of the deep scars of the various catastrophes and are the tangible testimony of urban and landscape changes. Irpinia tells us all this with precision, presenting us with a scenario full of indications, suggestions, errors and good examples that help us understand the transformations that have taken place, the reading of which can be aimed at acquiring new intervention tools for mitigation environmental risk to avoid the loss of identity of places and landscapes. Past experiences (earthquake of July 23, 1930 in Aquilonia), recent (earthquake of August 21, 1962 in Melito Irpino) and nearby post-earthquake reconstructions in Irpinia (earthquake of November 23, 1980 in Bisaccia), demonstrate how damage to identity places can be amplified rather than restored and revitalized by the reconstruction processes, if they cannot make use of a strong and consolidated environmental architectural culture, and of an already organized heritage of knowledge and intervention methodologies. The essay analyzes the relationship between the new and abandoned nuclei and between the sur- viving parts of the ancient villages affected by the earthquakes and those rebuilt, as part of the debate on the reconstruction of the countries affected by the recent earthquakes.