CITTA’ DELLE CITTA’ | SAN GIMIGNANO
Evolutionary model for the enhancement of the historic cities
“I’ll tell the story of the city that I go visiting, so much of big as small ones. Most of those who were once great, now have become small; and those who had first very small in the course of my life I have seen it grow and become powerful.”
| Erodoto |
The historic towns are works of art inhabited, guardians of memories and stratified signs, living witnesses of social, civil and economic practices throughout the centuries. But all this is not enough to ensure a future. Without design concepts and visions that combine the glorious past to an ambitious future, to create new social exchange, cultural and economic opportunities, it is mainly the historical cities to suffer the risk of a gradual depopulation, deteriorate and lose their cultural identity. The historic city is not a gift nor a tourist open-air park. San Gimignano is a culture place of exceptional value that has made the most of its architectural homogeneity and its original urban structure, that presenting itself to becoming a metaphor of historical cities, promoter of new shared common values of civilization and society.
The former convent and former prison of San Domenico: international center of excellence for research aimed at the conservation, management and production of new models and services to the historic cities.
The idea developed within the historic plots, architectural, symbolic, landscape and socio-cultural of San Gimignano, condensed in the structure of the former convent and former prison of San Domenico, find the potential to trasform the structure in a productive laboratory of knowledge, linked to the development and the exchange of evolutionary models aimed at formulating concrete answers for the future evolution of the historical Italian, European and international cities.
01. Meeting place: Agora of sharing knowledge, visions and common experiences
02. Place of exchange: International platform for the dissemination of knowledge, information and innovative ideas
03. Productive laboratory: Research center, unit of analysis and planning of new possible scenarios for the historic cities