Religious Heritography and Sustainable Tourism in the Middle Lands: insights from the Italian Alps

Within the framework of the so-called heritography, which combines heritage and geography, the contribution aims to investigate the deep relationship between the local religious cultural heritage and the geographical space of the Middle Lands, as seen and perceived by local communities. Involved in the Comuniterràe / Commonlands project, 300 inhabitants of ten mountain communities of the Val Grande National Park in Piedmont (Italy), took action in the co-planning and management of cultural and tourist initiatives, enhancing the local tangible and intangible heritage. Rural, scattered and hidden religious resources find new ways to tell the value of Alpine religious components and popular religiosity, making their landscapes places where tourists can live authentic spiritual and emotional experiences shared by the communities themselves.