9 October. Since the devastating earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy in April 2009, ICCROM has been committed to helping protect and restore the area's fragile cultural, architectural and urban heritage.

Interdisciplinary cooperation is key to ensuring that the revitalization of this city is done in a way which is both sustainable and sensitive to the people's social and economic needs. For this reason, the Vice-Commissary for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage in L'Aquila and ICCROM held a seminar on 7 October entitled 'Historic Territory of Aquila: from emergency to revitalization: management strategies and intervention methodologies'.

Based on actions taken following previous earthquakes worldwide, the objective was to provide recommendations and guidelines for managing the revitalization of the city's historic centre and surrounding area in both the mid and long term by examining the following:

• status of the historic town after the
  earthquake;
• approaches to the post earthquake revitalization - lessons from the past and guidelines for the future;
• potential policies for guidelines and for an integrated methodology approach.

On this basis, recommendations were made to develop methodologies of intervention that are tailored to the complexity of this situation.

Participants included representatives from L'Aquila University, three Superintendencies of L'Aquila, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), ICOMOS, UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (BRESCE) and Italian National Commission for UNESCO, as well as several scholars from Italian universities and foreign academies. The sessions were chaired by Eng. Luciano Marchetti, Vice-Commissioner for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage, and the Director General of ICCROM.

The seminar was kindly hosted by the Ecole française de Rome in Piazza Navona.

updated on: 23 October, 2009