Piccoli borghi d'Italia. Valorizzazione del Borgo Appio a Grazzanise in Terra di Lavoro.

The research project aims to offer a methodological model of research, study and analysis of the problems of progressive abandonment and depopulation of small villages in Italy, also in lower areas, as in the case of the proposed study. It means, also, through the integration of development strategies in several sectors of socio-economic and productive activities, provide the necessary tools to overcome the functional senescence factors of rural units starting from the villages of reclamation in the lower areas of Lazio and Campania. Valorization of the small villages is reflected in the short and medium term benefits for local communities and residents of villages of surrounding municipalities too. The obvious socio-economic and historical imbalance between the concentration without the development of the coastal strip and the functional senescence of the inner areas in the Campania, it requires searching for new territorial rebalancing strategies and enhancement of the environment for the development of inland rural areas, starting from the reconfiguration of areas of abandoned or disused. With the project aims to strengthen and promote the historical identity and to introduce activities that will enable the socio-cultural innovation and production in a sustainable development of the territory. Grazzanise, including in the Province of Caserta, has a strong identity and a clear rural vocation. It is essential to recover the traditions to strengthen the sense of belonging and so generate an evolutionary process of the territory. The Borgo Appio, a small hamlet of Grazzanise, placed in the middle of Campania Felix, then called Terra di Lavoro, arose as part of its complex plans division into farms by Opera National Fighters in 1939, on the model of large farms of southern Italy. The O.N.C., active between 1917 and 1977, with the important role of coordinating the activities of expropriation of lands and their colonization of former combatants, operated, in the fascist period, major reclamation actions and assignment in Agro Caleno, land of high environmental, productive and historical value and high tourist potential.