Paesaggio

This commentary on Article 131 of the Italian Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape (legislative decree no. 42/2004, as amended by legislative decree no. 63/2008) reconstructs the legal notion of paesaggio and the constitutional architecture of its protection and enhancement. The authors trace the regulatory evolution from the early laws on natural beauty (law no. 778/1922 and no. 1497/1939) through the Galasso law (no. 431/1985), the 1999 Consolidated Act and the 2000 European Landscape Convention, up to the current Code, showing how the concept has moved from a purely aesthetic understanding to landscape as the "form of the territory" and, today, as territory expressive of national identity, shaped by the interaction of natural and human factors and recognised as a constitutive part of the cultural heritage protected by Article 9 of the Constitution. Particular attention is devoted to the constitutional case law that elevates the landscape to a "primary and absolute" value and to the allocation of competences after the 2001 reform of Title V: Constitutional Court judgment no. 367/2007 and legislative decree no. 63/2008 reinforce the State's exclusive legislative competence over landscape protection, while the regions retain concurrent powers in enhancement. The authors also clarify the relationship between landscape and environment — overcoming the earlier "unitary endiadis" — and distinguish the functions of tutela (recognition, safeguarding, conservation and recovery of cultural values) and valorizzazione (promotion of knowledge, fruition, requalification and creation of new coherent landscape values), the latter being instrumental to and constrained by the former, and exercised in compliance with principles of conscious land use, quality and sustainability.