The memory of places for their valorisation. The case of the real estate assets of abandoned cloistered communities

Abstract

The decline in the number of consecrated men and, above all, women in catholic church, will lead in the coming years to an increase of abandoned ecclesiastical real estate assets and opportunities for re-functionalization. While churches owned by the dioceses have been catalogued in Italy since 2000, monasteries and convents owned by religious communities are still unknown in number and therefore results in a politics of valorization on a “case by case” scenario. However, this approach will begin to highlight possible replicable strategies: the meaning and the history of buildings allows for a recovery of a collective memory and to develop reuse strategies of former convents as common goods. This approach is exemplified by the actions taken on the former Augustinian Monastery of Vicopelago in Lucca, where the use of space and also building management interprets the previous monastic presence, reiterating the proto-democratic ways in which the community made decisions.