Via Appia as ariadne’s thread: linking landscape, community, memory, and design

In 2024 via Appia, the ancient Roman road connecting Rome to Brindisi, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Historical research indicates that the Municipality of Carosino (Taranto, Southern Italy) encompasses a section of this ancient route. Within the Preliminary Programming Document (DPP) for the new General Urban Plan (PUG), drafted between 2021 and 2022, via Appia had a crucial role in defining an alternative model of self-sustained local development. This model aligns with the Regional Territorial Landscape Plan of Puglia (PPTR, 2015), which promotes the acknowledgement of territorial heritage as a fundamental tool for landscape protection and its enhancement. The aim of the document was to come up with innovative planning strategies based on two identity elements: the historical presence of via Appia and the local viticultural vocation. This experimental process prioritized participatory planning, embracing the active role of inhabitants in constructing the "sense of place" as a founding principle. The landscape is seen as a dynamic system of relationships and as an identity-based heritage in constant transformation. The project put via Appia as a symbolic and infrastructural key element- a common thread linking historical memory with contemporary design - while testing participatory tools based on active listening and the coproduction of shared territorial visions. Carosino, part of "Albania Tarentina," owns a cohesive social fabric and widespread community activism, creating a "laboratory of complexity" where implicit participatory culture becomes a strategic resource. As a consequence, via Appia has the role of an identity-driven topos and of an infrastructural device interconnecting places, memories, and communities. It becomes an "Ariadne’s thread" leading territorial regeneration rooted in identity, landscape, and shared vision.