Gods’ Gates. Un approccio metodologico ai cammini del Sud

Abstract

Gods’ Gates. A methodological approach to the paths of Southern Italy

The theme of the Italian ‘paths’ relaunched by the pandemic has highlighted the need for a reconnaissance and enhancement of the itineraries of the South. The research extends the brand of the ‘Path of the Gods’ on the Amalfi coast, already a Unesco Cultural Heritage, to the multitude of little-known ‘Paths of the Gods that furrow the entire Sorrento peninsula, from Vietri to Punta della Campanella. The evocative force of the case study clarifies methodologies that can be exported to similar geographic contexts, based on the identification of the ‘Gods’ gates’, or those urban, rural, often marginal places to be discovered, united by constituting interchange ‘nodes’ between vehicular traffic and trail. Architectural experiments supported by a wayfinding approach highlight the potential structure and systemic perception between some of these territorial ‘hubs’. The ‘Gods’ gates’ can prefigure a new system of widespread centrality of this Mediterranean landscape: an extraordinary potential for the incentive of slow, alternative and sustainable tourism, but also unifying places, symbolically representative of the inseparable relationships between urban and rural, between ancient and contemporary worlds of communities.

Keywords: God’s paths, Faito, Lattari, Sorrento, Amalfi