Peripheries and Identity. The Restoration and Enhancement of the Heritage of Palermo’s Historical Villas and Hamlets in the Contemporary City

Palermo, with its extra-moenia land expansion, has, since the 16th–eighteenth centuries, been defined as a polycentric city, thanks to the “satellite” settlements constituted by rural farm (bagli) and aristocratic villas. During the nineteenth century, these architectural complexes formed the generating nucleus of the small hamlets (borgate), inhabited purely by a population dedicated to agriculture. During the second half of the twentieth century, the hamlets, as well as the villas and the rural farms, were absorbed by the new peripheral expansion of the city, giving rise to hierarchically dystopic relationships with it, so that the ancient fabrics and monumental emergencies became erratic ‘fragments’, often abandoned or subject to radical transformations. The population—both those who have migrated from the old town centre or other neighbourhoods to the suburbs, and those who have settled in the area for several generations—often disregard this heritage, which is inadequately preserved and enhanced. From an examination of the present status, the contribution aims to provide keys to reinterpreting places that are often considered “atopic” but which, in reality, possess strong identity characteristics, linked on the one hand to historical monumental presences. The contribution therefore seeks to understand, on the basis of some initial steps or on the basis of monumental restorations that have already been carried out, what the possible design strategies might be for reconnecting these places to their history, in the great system of the contemporary city, which today is increasingly oriented towards its historic centre and not its vast periphery.