Looking for Tratturo Celano – Foggia, A didactic and third university mission experience for the rediscovery and active care of the trattural territories between Abruzzo and Molise

Abstract

The “tratturi” (ship trails), although constituting one of the oldest and most well-known territorial networks in Italy, are nevertheless the object, especially in Abruzzo, of a generally discontinuous and occasional attention by the institutions and local administrations. Linked, in the past, to the journeys of shepherds and flocks, the Italian tratturi are today generally used for improper uses with respect to their original functions. These uses are, however, today regulated by concessions of little economic value for the public entity. Originally strictly linked to the local dimension, through the practices and cultures of pastoralism, the tratturi can still find today a sense and an economic, cultural and social function, starting from their recognition as territorial common assets, even beyond the rhetoric of conservation and memory, and of the so-called tourist "enhancement"? This paper discusses the answers given to this question by the local actors of Tratturo Candela Foggia - stakeholders, representatives of local administrations, defenders of collective and community interests - during the workshop "Looking for Tratturo" held in October 2021 with the support of some Italian and foreign universities.
This paper therefore summarises the results of an investigation and research conducted largely on land survey, and subsequently developed within some subsequent educational works, trying to indicate and highlight actions aimed at the care and active custody of these territories. What is at stake is the recognition of an opportunity that certainly has to do with slow and eco-sustainable tourism, but also and above all with the activation of fair and aware local development policies of marginal contexts, subject to demographic abandonment and to the socio-economic decline, aiming at the same time at the mitigation of territorial inequalities of different nature, economic, social, access to common goods and public facilities, in the interest of the communities that live and are still active custodians of these territories.