Il paesaggio dei Nebrodi in Sicilia come “giardino del Mediterraneo”

he reading of the Italian agricultural landscape carried out by Emilio Sereni (Sereni, 1961) is offered, even today, to all of us sensitive to the theme, as a seminal work, as a point of origin to analyze and understand more than effectively the change in the Italian landscape. Starting from the studies conducted by Sereni on the Mediterranean gardens in Sicily (Sereni, 1961, p. 37) the Nebrodi area (which also includes the area of the ancient settlement of Alesa), in Sicily, was examined. Although the Nebrodi receive much attention today, in consideration of the patrimonial, anthropological, cultural values, from authoritative scholars (Goethe, Consolo, Piovene, sereni himself ...), Sicilian artists and also from the local area (Guttuso, Mancuso Fuoco, Martorelli, Picking, ...) in reality it is only at the end of the 80s of the last century that they received institutional recognition through the perimeter of the Nebrodi Regional Natural Park (1994). This recognition, although necessary and indisputably deserving, has nevertheless selected, protecting in an almost integral way, in reality, only half of the largest geographical territory (the one that coincides mainly with the Apennine ridge, the innermost and most rural area) of the Nebrodi leaving outside the perimeter of the park the contexts of ethno-anthropological, historical-artistic and landscape value. In this relation, today the Italian landscape presents infinite critical issues: less and less countryside and more and more urbanization, highly intensive agriculture, an insistent phenomenon of abandonment, much of the forgotten internal territory, affected by various exoduses, a social and productive rarefaction and a strong imbalance of services ... (Magnaghi, 2020). It is starting from these readings that it will be possible to contribute to re-structuring an alternative vision, considering the Nebrodi bioregion as a wider ecological matrix, a structure that still maintains the values of the Mediterranean garden but which, to curb the devastating effects of the urban century, to still preserve its beauty and offer itself as a future habitat, needs an overall rebalancing project together with a re-patrimonialization of the landscape.