In the framework of the European rurAllure project: Promotion of rural museums and heritage sites in the vicinity of European pilgrimage routes, a new publication about Ancient thermalism has been published.
Edited by Maddalena Bassani, Maria Bergamo and Silvia González Soutelo, this special issue has been dedicated to the WP5 of this project, pilot identified like the ‘Italian pilot’, where the Thermal heritage on the ways to Rome has been the main issue of research. According to this subject some interesting articles has been considered in this volume:
The first section of this issue, include a general review of the objectives, methods and results of the project rurAllure: the article by Martín Lopez (coordinator of the project) et alii, The Horizon 2020 project rurAllure: studying pilgrimage as slow tourism, territorial development, social cohesion; and another one written by Alessia Mariotti, coordinator of the WP5, with the title: Thermal heritage on the ways to Rome. The role of knowledge for enriching tourism experiences along three Italian pilgrimage ways.
The second section of this issue opens with a contribution by Paola Zanovello and Andrea Meleri Paesaggi d’acqua. Il fenomeno del termalismo nel comprensorio euganeo tra antichità ed età moderna: with an interesting reconstruction of the history of the settlement around the Euganean area in the Veneto region, and its exploitation, during the ancient, Medieval and Modern times. Maddalena Bassani’s article continues with a study devoted to two ancient contexts of sacred nature located near the Via Romea Francigena and the Via Romea Strata in northern Italy, Pilgrimages to mineral springs between Antiquity and Middle Ages. In The Roman centuriations of Patavium and Altinum: a water management system in the central Venetian plain Jacopo Turchetto expands on the problem of water management in the ancient territories of the Roman cities of Patavium and Altinum in the Veneto region, offering a reflection about the centuriation and the cultural possibilities of the exploitation by the inhabitants of those plots of land delimited with gromatic precision. Finally, two articles devoted to two particular contexts close the second section of this issue. The first contribution is by Silvia González Soutelo, Miguel Gómez-Heras and Laura García Juan, Thermal heritage on the Via Francigena in Tuscany: a diachronical overview from the European rurAllure project, which focuses on the diachronical reconstruction of the landscape and settlements around the Val d’Orcia and the Bagno Vignoni thermo-mineral toen close to the Via Francigena. The second article, Ancient history for tourism development. Building content for meaningful travel itineraries by Alessia Mariotti and Mattia Vitelli Casella, proposes a pragmatic example for a plan of a cycling tourism experience in the site of Argenta, starting from the official itinerary of the Via Romea Germanica in the Po Delta River area.
The final section, shows some two different perspectives related to pilgrimages and archaeology between ancient and contemporary times. Ludovico Rebaudo’s contribution Un pellegrinaggio ‘archeologico’ di fine Quattrocento. Bernardo Michelozzi e Bonsignore Bonsignori in Anatolia e nell’arcipelago (1497-1498) offers an interesting insight about documented discoveries and reports reports of ancient artifacts in Anatolia, compiled in the late XV century by antiquarians; and Jacopo Tabolli’s article Digging into a Display: the ‘Voices’ of the Bronzes from San Casciano dei Bagni closes the issue with a presentation of the exhibition at the Quirinal Presidential Palace in Rome, which displays the objects left by pilgrims who went, between the Republican and Imperial ages, to the mineral springs of San Casciano ai Bagni (Siena).
For further information, please, visit the volume 204 of this journal, here.
Enjoy the thermal ways to Rome!
By: M. Bassani, M. Bergamo and S. González Soutelo
