Paesaggi termali. L’acqua come bene comune e dispositivo generatore dei luoghi

The paper explores the complexity of thermal landscape, focusing on the relation between the territory and its resources, in particular: water, man's work, architecture and the inhabitants. This analysis focuses on the system of relations that the thermal resource builds in both an historical and contemporary context, either rural or urban, with territory and local communities. The thermal landscape is not only a place where thermal water is present: it is an entity made up of natural and cultural elements, historical and geographical, functional and visual, material and immaterial. Water draws on and shapes the territory just to endure the actions of those who inhabit the territory. Mankind creates many artefacts and structures to take advantage of the water and, at the same time, they give healing properties and symbolic meanings to it (Berrino, 2014).