Mining Landscapes as Tangible and Intangible Heritage: The Case of the Valli Joniche of the Peloritani in Sicily

The mining landscape today is equally a resource and a challenge for conservation and transmission to the future of what it holds, as tangible and intangible heritage. Quarries, mines, extraction sites, disused industrial sites, tell the historical memory of work, traditions, and identities of places and people who inhabited them and who worked there. The creation of geo-mining park allows us today to conserve and narrate this enormous cultural heritage, unfortunately often little recognized and investigated, even by regulatory instruments, which are weak or completely absent. The Valli Joniche of the Peloritani, in eastern Sicily, in the province of Messina, represent an interesting case of mining landscape, which includes municipalities in the past suited to mining and metalworking activities, and which is still today preserves the traces of his history. A heritage almost completely unknown, which could not be completely forgotten only through a conservation project, with a proposal that focuses on the creation of a historical and environmental geo-mining park. Conservation, reuse, and re- functionalization are the only tools that allows us to create a link between past and future, with the creation of places that tell historical memory, knowledges and work culture, but which at the same time have a new contemporary identity. The recontextualization of this type of cultural heritage is also crucial for the purposes sustainable development, both environmental, with the reclamation of abandoned production sites, and economic and social, giving back to the society what would otherwise be lost forever.