The reflections of architect and researcher Francesca Gotti and artist Alessandro Quaranta converge on the relationship between people and places, intertwining individual memories with shared practices of caring for the land.
In June 2025, on the occasion of the Na.Tur.Arte Festival – The Valparina Wilderness Area between Hospitality, Art, and Nature – and as part of the fourth cycle of Thinking Like a Mountain – The Orobie Biennale, participants in the gathering were invited to share narratives that explore forms of relationship with the natural environment.
The following is an excerpt from the meeting.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
Italian and European cinema of the last twenty years has produced multiple narratives revolving around a return to the mountains—The Wind Blows Round by Giorgio Diritti (2005), The Eight Mountains by Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (2022), Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet (2023)—or to rural life—The Wonders by Alice Rohrwacher (2014), The Beasts by Sorogoyen (2022): stories that set out with a romantic, idyllic tone, yet which soon take on a harsh, if not downright dark turn. These narratives share the desire to explore the possibility of reconnecting with a wild and extreme dimension of nature, a life change and paradigm shift driven by an inner need.1
The search for a remote location reflects an unconscious, profound calling: to start over, test ourselves, create space, learn, and find our bearings. This intuition of return first calls into question the temporal dimension of the relationship we weave with a place: how long do we stay? How often do we return? And if we remain, how often do we move away?
The rhythm with which we relate to a place depends on our need to (re)connect with it and on our ability to satisfy this need; simultaneously, time determines and shapes the scope we have for influencing the place while being reciprocally shaped by it.2
These films sensitively portray the fragility of our needs when faced with the extreme natural world: it’s not just a matter of being exposed to seasons and the elements, or to the unpredictability and cruelty of the wild; it’s about confronting the imperturbability of nature’s immensity in the face of human drama. But it’s also the complexity of the micro and macro transformations of the landscape, where layers accumulate from the incessant work of centuries-old geological changes, the violence of disfiguring human intervention, sudden catastrophe, and the decline of traditional productive systems.3
The more intense the frequency and duration of our interactions with a place, the clearer the factors that contribute to modifying it will appear to us, the more comprehensible signs, apparitions, and absences will become—ones which would otherwise remain obscure and indecipherable. And in the most extreme manifestation of restanza,4 as a conscious and radical choice, we actively enter the life of the place. From observers we turn into guardians: finally revealing itself to us as a system of systems (plant, animal, geological, social, productive or logistical…), we understand how the landscape, constantly crossed by events that condition us and of which we are—more or less directly—agents, and that these changes follow us even when we move away, up until we return again.
Only then are we ready to approach the landscape as a common good: something we have the right and duty to preserve, and for which we are responsible.5 This means rediscovering that world of centuries-old practices that have witnessed—certainly not passively—the advance of the forest and the disappearance of high-altitude pastures, the abandonment of terraces and drystone walls, the construction of facilities and infrastructures, the excavation of quarries, the crumbling of mountain structures such as the calecć or the baitei.6 Practices that have resisted by fighting, rebuilding, reconquering, or simply staying, inhabiting, and working. But when the time comes for the old mountain guardians to leave, then it becomes even more necessary to return: this is what many young people are doing, led by an ancient calling, willing to offer their fragilities to nature.7
Traversing, returning, observing, listening, recording the landscape constitute the first and fundamental acts of care that we all have the right and duty to reclaim, in order to continue protecting places that otherwise risk being cancelled if not entirely destroyed.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
I am a video artist, so I work with images. In my practice, I want to show what cannot be seen in a photograph that objectively portrays a landscape. Often my inspiration comes from a place. But what is a place?
A place is not necessarily something recognizable—like a building, a church, a small chapel. It can also be a very specific point in a forest, in a clearing. A place that preserves a memory, a recollection, an emotional bond. And it is precisely this bond that makes that place frequented, and that frequentation becomes almost a ritual, insofar as the place becomes a repository of presences, of sedimentations. To make everything more concrete, I’ll now tell you about a place you can’t see—one you can only imagine. After I’ve told you about it, I’ll show you a photograph.
All the locations I talk about are mountain areas, because Alpine environments are an important reference for me. I was born in Turin but I have a very strong bond with the mountains, for family reasons. My parents come from a small town in a valley in the province of Cuneo, a reality fairly similar to that of Val Brembana. Depopulation occurred from the 1960s onwards, as happened here too. I am the son of a generation that moved to the city for a more comfortable life, a less tiring job, something more remunerative than keeping animals, tending meadows, tilling terraces. I’m interested in the thought behind inhabiting the mountain. The place I chose to tell you about is also in the mountains.
We are in the Alps of Haute-Provence. In 2015, I don’t know if you remember, but in spring, around May, I heard shocking news on the radio: a plane crash. A Germanwings pilot had intentionally crashed into a mountain. The massif is called Tête de l’Estrop, reaching heights of 2,600–2,700 meters. The plane had departed from Barcelona and was headed to Frankfurt. Planes following that route always pass over this mountain area. That day, that pilot decided to commit suicide during the flight. All the people on board died, passengers and crew.
I was a few kilometers from the impact site. I tried to imagine if the mountain, in its silence, had retained any memory of that impact. Nothing was left. The plane had disintegrated. Since the impact had occurred in an area very far from inhabited centers, no one had heard anything. There are no memories, no sound evidence.
Walking in the surroundings, I found myself in a very dense thicket. As I advanced further, I came to a depression in the ground. I approach, and enter on tiptoe. Down there, I find a pond, as if in a crater, surrounded by a patch of stones. On the other side of the lake, I see a young deer drinking. It was a magical sight. I was thinking about that plane, the devastating impact. In front of me was absolute silence, an animal quenching its thirst at the water source. From then on, I began to return there, to photograph, to make video recordings. I went back even in winter, and under the ice of the lake I saw frogs, hibernating. They seemed frozen, motionless under a glass sheet. Another key presence.
And so for me, a place is a void inhabited by a presence. In this case, the presence is represented by animals. The young deer, the frogs. That place took on a sacred importance. “Sacred” immediately makes us think of the religious, but in this case I’m speaking of a sacred that roots us to the Earth. A sense of belonging. Despite not being originally from that place, I felt a magnetic sense of belonging. A place that can be frequented, visited multiple times, that generates a ritual. Now I’ll show you a photograph. Probably, you’ll superimpose the story you heard onto this image. If you had seen it before, without the story, you probably would have looked at it with different eyes.
I’ll tell you about another place. We are in the Cottian Alps, in the province of Cuneo, near Monviso. Monviso is this pyramidal mountain of gneiss, 3,841 meters above sea level, accompanied by Visolotto, another triangular mountain that stands beside it. Below lies the Po Valley, with many meadows, ledges, a bit like they could be here too. The orographic aspect is a bit different, because the valley is exposed in a north-south direction: a south-facing slope is completely exposed to the sun, the opposite one, instead, is in the shade. After a long hike, having arrived at Pian del Re, I descend the slope, avoiding the path marked on the map. At a certain point, looking towards the valley, I see a small hamlet of abandoned houses, all in stone, caught by a ray of sun that pierces through the clouds and illuminates that very hamlet. A magical effect is created, it will have happened to many of you too. As I descend towards this hamlet, I see a group of roe deer with a young one grazing. As I approach, they flee. Here too, they were the ones who indicated the place to me. The animal, the frequentation: finally, that place filled with a presence. This type of hamlet, in the local Occitan dialect, is called a meire: small stone localities used as shelter for animals, especially during the summer season. Often these places have a particular denomination, one lost in the mists of time, and which probably not even our grandparents know. Perhaps those names are rooted in encounters akin to those I’m recounting. I could have given a name to that place myself, starting from that apparition. Instead, this locality already has a name: it’s called Meire Fondue.
Man has always needed to name places: to be able to find them again, to be able to map them, to have a stable relationship between himself and space. I’d like to share a passage from a beautiful novel by a Swiss author who writes in Romansh, a Neo-Latin language of the Grisons canton. It’s dedicated to a shepherd who lives in a small refuge, who lives as a shepherd and who defines a place.
“Four hens sit on the glacier stone. Giacumbert turns his head. Four hens fly away from the glacier stone.
Here is the Gaglinera. They have awakened.
They all stand in a row, on the gray horizon; it seems as if they are standing to attention, on the rock smoothed by the glacier.
The row of hens descends, suddenly: one, two, four.
One faster, like so many little pearls Gaglinera.
It’s six in the morning and Giacumbert is already soaked through. He looks and looks, amazed. This would also be judgment day.”
He defines that place as the Gaglinera, because on that stone laid bare by glaciers, the hens grazed.
I’ll tell you about this last place. In this case too we are in my place of origin, it’s called Aisone, in the middle of the Stura di Demonte Valley, in the province of Cuneo. Behind the town, a bit like here, there’s a calcareous rock wall three to four hundred meters high. Above that wall, there are beech woods. In a period of my life marked by unhappiness and psychological instability, I climbed beyond those calcareous rocks. After a long and impervious walk, I reached a grassy clearing. Looking out from a hill, from a sort of precipice that looks towards the valley, precisely at that moment I had a sudden apparition: an eagle, exploiting the ascending currents, rose from the walls below and appeared before right me, in flight. I found her there, right in front of me. She was also frightened, she didn’t expect to find anyone there. She made a sudden turn and plunged back down. At that exact point, I stopped. Time, for me, stopped. I understood that that coincidence—finding myself there, just as the true inhabitant of that place was rising—was very powerful. At that moment I felt like an intruder, or perhaps a witness. Since then, every summer, that place has become a pilgrimage destination for me. Not always at the same time of year, but if I can, I return. It’s a place that gives me peace, reconnects me to that event, and reminds me how much we, as living beings, are deeply related to the environment in which we live. I’ll show you the photograph, so you can look at it. And you can see how much an image, disconnected from its story, has a completely different value.
Based on these stimuli, I’ll now ask you to describe one of your places. I repeat: not a sacred place in the dogmatic sense, recognized by the Church or by a collective creed. But a place sacred to you. A place important in your experience.
PARTICIPANT
It’s very interesting that your places became special the moment you encountered animals. This has never happened to me. My places are those where I cancelled everyone out. And this somewhat strikes me, frightens me.
I am Anna Maria; my place is a place called Corna di Ca, here in Roncobello. From there you look towards the valley, you see the entrance point to the town. I hadn’t thought about this place for a while: nothing particular happened here but it’s a place where I went looking for inspiration as a girl. What happened in the valley towards Roncobello stimulated important thoughts in me and it’s a place I shared only with a friend of mine: we often went there together but in silence. I haven’t been back there since. Perhaps because it has become more difficult to reach as the undergrowth has thickened.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
Can you tell me what you see from there?
PARTICIPANT (ANNA MARIA)
The void, the valley, the precipice, the road that reaches Roncobello, the rocks, the horizon, and so the opening on the world. That is the narrowest point before reaching the town, and from above, you see this, you see so much green. Perhaps now less because of the storms. You see the color of the rocks, very intense; you hear the bus arriving and honking. I don’t know if it still honks but it used to honk. The cars going up on Friday evening were much more numerous, so it was fun trying to figure out who was coming, what they wanted, what they would bring. And you see the sun set.
PARTICIPANT
I’m Paolo. I should say I’ve always liked going to the mountains alone because it gives me a sense of freedom. There’s a place near a mountain that can be seen from everywhere; you can see it from the valley, but it’s a place that’s been unoccupied for years. A chamois hunter pointed it out to me. That place is called Vendulpia. Probably none of you has ever passed by there. There was a long path that connected various huts, all now in disuse. I liked going there as a boy because I never came across anyone, you felt truly free. You saw chamois, you saw eagles, you saw vipers. You wondered about the reason for the strange names of these places, like Vendulpia, or like Pas dell’Aesì, Ol baitù, I cuncoi. For example, the Aesì is a small pot made of soapstone, and the fact that the pass on the top of a mountain is called this generated a degree of curiosity in me…so I liked wandering there, when I was there, I was happy.
PARTICIPANT
I’m Fiorella and I’m also Paolo’s wife. I too love going to the mountains alone, especially when he works the evening shift: he doesn’t know it, but I slip out!
My favorite place is Monte Campo above the huts of Mezzeno. I can reach it easily from home, following the entire path of the historic bird-catching huts. You arrive at this plateau from which a sweeping view opens onto the Presolana, the Arera, the Tre Pizzi. In spring, there are immense blooms of crocuses. At the end of winter, in the semi-thawed puddles you see the reflection of the Arera. The view you have over the valley, towards Piazza Lenna, is very wide, so at sunset there’s great silence, quiet, it gives you a real sensation of peace. Very often you see eagles circling, but also black grouse and chamois. Being alone I can also get very close to the grazing roe deer . They are always unexpected encounters obviously, but close ones, such a sense of peace.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
Do you go there often?
PARTICIPANT (FIORELLA)
At least three or four times a year.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
Since you started going there, have you noticed changes? Have you seen the landscape evolve over the years?
PARTICIPANT (FIORELLA)
No, the environment is always the same; it hasn’t undergone particular changes over time. There are the bird-catching huts that dominate from above, each one carefully maintained over time. Even the paths get mended, because obviously nature grows and expands. There’s always this sensation that, even if you don’t see anyone, someone has been there, maintaining the place. And this gives you back a sense of the past, but also of the present: a restored path, a little landslide that gets fixed after winter, a fallen tree that’s no longer there when you go back. You realize that, little by little, people do take care of the place. They are not mass tourism destinations, it’s still frequented by people who respect it. And to keep the bird-catching huts in order they need to be cleaned, and this contributes to keeping the entire area alive.
PARTICIPANT
I’m Francesco. I drew the ridges of Menna and Pizzo which are two local mountains and which are not actually a specific place, but they are the place I return to almost every year because they allow me to see other places that are meaningful for me, all together, in one glance or over a short time. So it’s an observation point.
I’m from Seriate, so this route gives me an overview, it lets me take in all the important places of my formative years. What I thought about after drawing them is from what point of view I had portrayed them. They are ridges, I could have drawn them from here or there and up or down, but actually I realized I was drawing them from the perspective of the first house where I lived here in Roncobello for several years. Without even realizing it, I had drawn them from that specific place, but I only thought about it later. That too is a significant place, so actually I represented two in one.
PARTICIPANT
I’m Mauro. I’m going to follow right on from your story because I too thought of a ridge actually. I’m from Gromo, Seriana Valley, so we’re from the other side. My place of affection is an alpine lake, just above a couple of hours’ walk from my mother’s house, where I grew up, called Cardeto. 2019 is the year my father passed away, and when I arrived at this lake there were people there, more than the usual nobody. I needed a less noisy place, so I tried to go beyond the lake, climbing right up the mountain: an invented route, totally invented, through rhododendrons, through brambles, until we got to the ridge itself, which probably doesn’t have a name, because it then leads to the Madonnino. I sat down and in front of me was this sinuous movement of the mountain that led the gaze towards the horizon, but the horizon was nothing other than a crown of other mountains. I saw the Presolana, Monte Secco; you could also see the ski lifts on the Gromo slopes. That was the first time I went there. I think of it indeed as a sacred place, or perhaps consecrated to the thought of that moment when I needed to immerse myself in a new place, a moment when I was still meditating a lot about my father’s passing away. I really needed a clean place, that is, one with no precedent in my memory, but that could be associated with this thing from that moment on.
I don’t go there often. My drawing is that little ridge that accompanies the gaze and somehow relaxes you. It was very green, by the way, since it’s not a high altitude spot. This mountain undergrowth, which also has its share of nettles, is as if it could untie the knots of thought… this powerful green.
PARTICIPANT
My name is Maria Luisa, I’ve been frequenting Roncobello for fifty years; I only come on vacation, I’m a city dweller, but it’s a town I love. I don’t have a particular place, but what strikes me, what really makes me think, what steals my heart are the scents, the smells.
The scent of lime trees, thyme, silene, flowers. It’s the scents that make me feel good, but also sounds, of cicadas or crickets in the evening. Sometimes when I’m at home I seem to hear them, and I feel like I have certain mountain scents deep inside me. The new cemetery in Roncobello runs along a bend on a road full, full, full of lime trees. The scent of lime tree drives me crazy. Sometimes at home when I smell the scent of lime tree, I think of this place, of that new little cemetery, which was beautiful.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
It’s rather atmospheric. It’s the power of places or atmospheres that we then manage to retain with us later on, that is, that we can re-evoke it, reactivate it. They are olfactory memories.
PARTICIPANT
My name is Oscar, I’m Mexican, but I’ve been visiting Italy for a while. The place I most like to frequent, in all the countries I arrive in, is the market. Because you turn up alone, no one knows you, you enter a mass of people, a mass of noises, an accumulation of sensations, an experience that involves all the senses. To such an extent that you almost perceive a sense of void. Sometimes, it’s right where there’s an accumulation of so many things that you seem to perceive the void.
Last Tuesday, for example, the market wasn’t so beautiful, but it was empty, but you could still hear the noise: boxes moving, someone’s voice offering fruit, vegetables. I really like that type of noise. Sometimes they let you taste something: it’s as if, on entering the market, you cross many different geographical places, which are not yours, but which mix. In Mexico, markets are not like here, where people arrive and then leave and everything empties out. They are spaces that fill up, empty out, but meanwhile people mix so much that they almost cancel each other out. And this gives me peace. As if no one really is really looking at you, no one makes you feel the weight of your presence. Only if you get close, maybe there’s contact with someone, a stranger. Even if then everything empties, a memory remains. Maybe you can’t even tell it, but it stays inside you. Then in Mexico, there’s the smell of spices. Here maybe it’s the smell of people, old objects, new or used clothes. Everything mixes. For me they are very different experiences. And sometimes I don’t even buy anything. I go there just because I like the confusion, this plurality. And I also like that in Italy, in markets, you find people who speak so many languages, idioms, dialects.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
I think all this has a lot to do with the ritual character of certain religious processions: this tide of bodies that suddenly coordinates, generating chaos. There are sounds, voices, all these bodies together that, despite the density, are united in a magical moment. And then, everything disappears. There’s a magical component, I’d say a profane sacredness, which—especially in the urban context, which is clearly different from this—giuves you a rare experience. Because in city life, there isn’t much scope for sacredness: it’s much more fragmented. Instead these recurrences—like open-air markets that come along, set up and then disappear—create a magical scene. And then, they vanish.
I was struck by the theme you brought up, Oscar, that of smells. But there’s also light. Out here, more than in the city, the light is completely different. There’s also mist, when you look across the valley. And then, in the market, there’s also touch, which we haven’t mentioned much, but which brings you back a bit to reality, to nature. It’s paradoxical, but it’s almost as if to experience nature, in the city, you go to the market and touch the vegetables. Even there a connection is created.
PARTICIPANT
I drew a small lake that lies at the base of a peak. It’s a small natural lake, with a stone in the center and many others around it.
I drew it because it’s the first mountain destination I reached together with my father—or at least, the first I remember. And I believe, or maybe I like to think, that a part of me was formed in that place. Every now and then I go back there, to rediscover it, to refresh it. It’s Lake Pietraquadra, just above the one described before.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
If I may, I’d like to pick up from what you’re saying. I really liked it before when we were talking about the bird-catching huts, and the fact that maintenance is done on them. Perhaps we, as citizens—as urban creatures—experience nature differently. We experience it in a completely different way from those who inhabit it every day. And we tend to take many things for granted.
I come from the city of Bergamo, near the Maresana. If I had to think of a place that, for a period of my life, had a “sacred” dimension, it would be right there: a field, just before the Maresana begins.
I started going there in a period of transition, of formation, and I went back almost every day. I was looking for something. As said before by those who went to a place to think, to gaze at the horizon. Over time I began to perceive seasonal changes: grass growing, being cut, flowers… In September, one year, they fenced off the field to let the transhumance pass. Then, after Covid, it was completely fenced off. And you could no longer go in. For me, that field had become a constant place of return. But at that point I understood that it wasn’t a public space: it was private land. The owner had decided to close it off, and everyone had to adapt.
And there I realized something: when you see a forest, a hill, a slope, you imagine you’ll always be able to go there, that it will always be there. And instead, if you know it well enough, you realize there’s maintenance going on: someone cuts back, someone clears the paths. Maybe you who live here can tell us if you’ve seen changes related to this. Because when a part of the fields is no longer cultivated, the forest takes everything back. It’s something I had never thought about, but talking with breeders and farmers I began to understand the logic of nature better, which is not 100% wild.
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
If you let the forest do its thing, it goes on by itself. Maybe some of the trees break, but it eats up the meadowlands straight away. What our forefathers did with so much effort—removing roots, removing stones to have grass to feed the animals—if you just let it go for three or four years, it’s no longer a meadow. Pioneer plants start growing, brambles… The meadow is delicate. Keeping it requires commitment. If you abandon it, it disappears.
It’s the same with paths: you have to cut back, mend things. Many people do it without telling anyone: they just go up and fix stuff. But if you don’t keep up with them, they’ll close up. If you let nature do its thing, in certain places you can’t get through anymore. You need a bit of human hand, if we want to continue enjoying those places. Because without a path, you’re not going to get there.
PARTICIPANT (FIORELLA)
Mountain pine grows tremendously in width, so it closes off passageways. Where once you could walk, now—if it’s not frequented—you can no longer pass. It’s an “invasive” plant, as it were.
Whoever wants to continue reaching a point often takes it upon themselves to keep the way clear. Someone does it on their own initiative, because they love passing by. They say: “It’s closing up,” and they free it.
When it snows, the snow crushes the pines and closes everything. To keep it accessible, you have to cut it clear. Nature grows fast, it changes landscapes.
When I was a child, all that area was meadows. Now it’s only forest. All meadow, even high up towards Branchino. There were cattle, hay was made. My parents went up to Branchino to make hay. It was all meadow. After the ’70s everything changed. Now there’s almost nothing but forests. Nature is quick to reconquer territory. First shrubs, then trees. Then those that aren’t strong fall in bad weather… If those big snowfalls ever come back. This has also changed.
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
Take the name of the town: Roncobello. Once it was called just Ronco. But since there were many places called “Ronco” in Italy, each had to specify: Roncobello, Roncoscrivia, and so on.
The word ronco comes from dialect, and means a meadow taken from the forest. That is, you had to cut the trees down, pull up the roots, take out stones… and finally, grass would grow there. That was the runc, the meadow obtained in this way. Over time, by fertilizing the soil, a good meadow came out. And still today you find places called Ruc, because once there was forest there, then it became a meadow.
PARTICIPANT (MAURO)
In fact, I did a little project on a place called Ruc. The theme was this: the necessity of dialoguing with nature to be able to maintain an accessible space.
It made me think of a phenomenon often noticed in our valleys, especially the high ones. If you venture into a forest—or what we call “forest” today—you suddenly realize it wasn’t always a forest. Why? Because you see little houses, old stables. My grandmother, and also my mother, told me they didn’t live in the middle of the forest. They were in the middle of the meadows.
There were cattle, they slept there at night. This is also the result of depopulation, of the end of certain activities that drove people to leave. And all this is visible in the landscape. It’s a truly fascinating theme.
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
Once they actually used to say “Runcafò.” It was also a verb: to pull a meadow out of a forest. It was very hard work: trees were cut, roots were pulled up, soil was arranged, it was “fertilized.” Our old people worked so hard. And today, seeing those meadows being lost, it’s as if they were going back in time.
PARTICIPANT (FIORELLA)
Shepherds stayed in the mountains for months. Those meadows they obtained by removing stones, moving them to form enclosures or piles, freeing up space for their flocks. So they maintained the territory even in the high mountains, where today there are beautiful meadows: all the fruit of great labor, done by shepherds, herdsmen. You had to free the land for your flock. Either the stones were piled up, or drystone walls were built. It was also a matter of maintaining the territory.
PARTICIPANT
My name is Marco. I thought of various places, but the most significant is an oak forest, near my house, beyond a small valley. Its peculiarity is that, from home, if someone called you, you couldn’t hear them. Voices couldn’t reach behind that little mountain,. It has always been a place of escape for me. I frequented it from the age of six to eleven. There I built my own little village, which I had to rebuild every day, because otherwise nature would eat it back up. It was my excuse to leave home, to forget everything.
I spent hours there, and I returned when it was dark. Today, that place is still significant: I put so much time into it, so much effort. And then, within a month, nature took everything back. But it remained a place where, if I want to get out of my context and get back to myself, I go there. It’s the place par excellence. There, time stops. It’s like before when we talked about the eagle appearing suddenly: it’s a place where time doesn’t exist, or at least doesn’t flow linearly. I think this is the most powerful thing: finding a place outside of time. And then there was effort. Every day I carried a bucket full of things, because the village grew: it became more and more complicated, bigger and bigger. After five years it had become a gigantic thing.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
What did you put in this bucket?
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
In this bucket: everything. I put brick fragments, I put various tools that I might need over time. Then it became the place of my imagination, so it had a well, it had a church, it had a town hall. It had everything: a wall, a moat. Every day this place grew more, and every day it needed me more. It was perfect, perfect for me. At a certain point I had to abandon the project, because it had become too demanding.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
What do you consider to be the next step in terms of taking care, if you even get to building your own city?
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
In my case it was no more than a will for escape. When I finished school, I wanted to go there. I felt as if there were beings inhabiting it. I still feel them now. Just thinking about it gives me chills, but it was real. Those beings needed me. Perhaps I would go back the next day to find the roof had collapsed on a school or a house: it couldn’t be left like that. It wasn’t admissible.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
So, as a sacred place, did it become your sacrificial altar?
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
Sacrificial of my time. My time away from the world. And the strongest thing I felt was that I couldn’t opt out: I had to go there. It was like a calling. I think that place saved me, in a silent way. It probably coincides with the most traumatic years of my life: the end of elementary school, from 7 to 11 years old. A watershed. I have no memories of anything else. It’s incredible. My mind performed a total removal, except for that place. I remember everything I did there. But I remember nothing of school, nor of my classmates. Only that place.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
So you think the act of building fixed everything, overwriting the rest?
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
Exactly. Building, but above all feeling useful. Feeling that my presence was necessary. This made every gesture significant. Nothing else mattered. It’s my place of choice, without doubt: that oak forest. It’s located in Trevignano, in the province of Rome, on Lake Bracciano.
It’s a place that has remained intact, because it’s part of a park area. The countryside remained countryside. There are no constructions, there are no buildings to disturb the view. In the 1960s, like all over Italy, so much was built… but there, the form of the place remained. It’s still intact, with its pure views, ones that aren’t “imposed from above.”
FRANCESCA GOTTI
Taking care of something saves us.
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
Absolutely. And then care also passes through oneself. It’s something reciprocal.
I don’t think there can be care of the external world if first you don’t have some idea of personal wellbeing, of inner balance.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
It’s a matter of mutual exchange. Taking care of a place we choose—a path, a meadow, a new world, an imaginary village—we are also taking care of ourselves. We inhabit it, we domesticate it, we build it. This is what keeps us anchored, with respect to changes, traumas, to what happens.
I was talking with Alessandro just today: you can take care of a place by cutting grass or trees, but also simply by returning there. Returning is already an act of care: you protect it, you observe it, you become a silent guardian. You check that it doesn’t get canceled, ruined, built over.
There are also extreme examples, like a shepherd in southwestern Sardinia who protected his own land from real estate speculation. These are gestures of great strength.
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
He transformed it, he returned it. He created unique viewpoints. I don’t know if we’re talking about the same person, but I seems to recall he also built a theater.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
Yes, he was Ovidio. Ovidio and his sheep.
The problem is that, when you enter the urban environment, everything becomes more complicated: there are issues of property, of soil, of buildings, of land occupation.
In the natural and vegetable world there’s more margin for action. I don’t know if it ever happened to you that someone objected…
PARTICIPANT (MARCO)
No, because it was an isolated place. I see this discourse very much in abandoned places: those that no longer serve a public function. They become accessible containers. If I think of my first works with Giulia, it was right there that we worked: abandoned places were the ones to go to.
In the city, where everything is built and everything has a purpose, places that lose their purpose become spaces where you can overwrite, where you have the time and chance to create.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
Yes, they are places of potential. We were saying before: I come to a hidden place, I walk, I’m not observed, I feel alone, and I have a privileged perspective on something: a valley, a courtyard, a field. From there I can imagine, and maybe achieve something. But also just reset. I have no memories there, and I can build new ones.
In urban contexts, these places get re-naturalized: nature or animals take them back. It’s a rewriting of places.
I think of the former SNIA: it was a factory, then a speculative construction site. But the ground gave way, it opened and a lake was formed. It seems unlikely, but it happened. And around that lake a collective was founded: inhabitants, artists, students, who presided over it to prevent its further exploitation.
The more isolated we are, the less we get involved, perhaps. But even in the mountains there’s a sense of struggle. I saw the APE group, the Proletarian Hiking Association of Bergamo, organize walks against the construction of a ski lift. From peaks to valleys, to cities, there are forms of care and resistance. Even small strips of territory become fundamental.
Whether it’s walking, building a parallel world, or saving a newly born lake, all this reconnects us. After Covid, there was a return to towns, a widespread reconnection. And even if maybe we’re going back now, these practices of care keep us together, allowing us to meet, even if we come from different contexts: the city, the countryside, the mountains.
It’s a way of reconnecting on a broader scale, of reopening the horizon, knowing that a place exists and to which we can return.
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
Yes, and especially for young people. Even just wandering in nature, whether in the mountains or not, builds character. Nature isn’t always beautiful. It tests you. But precisely because you’re alone, it makes you grow. It gives you a sense of assurance. It gives you the measure of what you are. When you’re a boy and riddled with doubts, doing something alone in nature, and feeling that nature lets you do it, helps you tremendously.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
Yes, because what you truly are emerges in the silence of nature. There’s no one to tell you what you have to do. And then, like in his story, you might do even seemingly absurd things—but ones motivated from within, not from the outside. It’s an empty space that isn’t occupied by anything, it waits for you. It waits to be filled by you.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
You look out onto something—a valley, an empty place—and there’s effort. It might be chosen effort: you decide to walk, to climb. But you measure yourself with yourself. Every day you do a bit more, you know your body, your mind. Physical effort uncovers thoughts, it provides clear-mindedness. In 2016 I crossed Umbria and the Marche, from Assisi to Lake Fiastra. I needed to empty myself. And that walk, that rhythm puts everything in order. It’s a different effort compared to those who work, from those who are shepherds, certainly. But it has a sacred dimension: you look out onto the void and find your answers. Like a shout in the valley: the void gives you back something.
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
There was an old hunter who told me: “To go to the top, you go there. Then the mountains will tell you where to pass.” I believed it. Even if the paths weren’t there anymore. They didn’t discourage you. They told you: “Go!” And if you saw a chamois, you would tell them about it. It was valuable lesson: follow your instinct, read the landscape. Even if there’s no path, the mountains will tell you.
FRANCESCA GOTTI
It’s almost an instinctive form, isn’t it?
PARTICIPANT (PAOLO)
Yes, you develop the instinct of conservation. Even fear is useful. It makes you understand your limits, it makes you decide with a sense of awareness. And taking care of a path is important. Our old people made a huge effort. Today it would take so little: just to cut back, to fix things. But leaving a path in good state means leaving something for those who will come after us.
ALESSANDRO QUARANTA
It’s also a question of memory. We are a fragment of a chain that precedes us. Maintaining paths is honoring the work of our ancestors. You could just sit on the sofa, but something inside drives you to take care, because you have received something and you want to give it back.
You want those who will come after you also to be touched like you.
1.UNCEM (2025) Montagne Italia 2025 – Istituzioni, Movimenti, Innovazioni. Le Green Community e le sfide dei territori, Rubbettino: Soveria Mannelli
2. Thoreau, Henry David (1854) Walden. Or Life in the Woods
3. Kropotkin, Petr (1902) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
4. Magnaghi, Alberto (2020) Il Principio Territoriale, Bollati Boringhieri: Turin
5. Rumiz, Paolo (2007) La Legenda dei Monti Naviganti, Feltrinelli: Milan
6. Settis, Salvatore (2012) “Il paesaggio come bene comune,” Belfagor, 67(1), pp. 81–90
7. Corti, Michele (2004) “L’alpeggio nelle Alpi lombarde tra passato e presente,” in SM Annali di San Michele, vol. 17, pp. 31–155
