The valorization of vernacular farm buildings for an innovative rural tourism.

The recent growing research of new ways for widening sustainable tourism opportunities leaded, in many European countries, to the valorisation of some farmyards, together with the working activities usually conducted there. Rural tourism offers new ways for enjoying the agricultural land in close contact with naturally untouched landscapes, often coupled with the unique opportunity to personally look at the preparation of traditional genuine food products, with the possibility to taste and buy them. In this way, rural tourism enables to appreciate some traditional aspects that the new industrialized modern society may have forgotten. For a sound valorization of rural tourism, a suitable restoration and functional requalification of the farm building plays a central role. With the aim to plan a common approach about new innovative ways for valorising rural tourism, mainly in mountain areas, in the present paper a first analysis focused on the possibilities of exploiting agricultural activities and restoring vernacular farm buildings for rural tourism was conducted, with reference to some areas located into different countries of the Adriatic-Ionian Macro-region. Some vernacular farm buildings, synthesizing in their architectural expression the culture, traditions and ways of life of different generations of rural population, were identified and analyzed in their typology, with the aim to detect and compare their architectural aspects. The results of this survey enable the drafting of an innovative common protocol for planning suitable technical and economical interventions aimed to the revitalization of mountain rural areas, through the organization of a network focused on the valorization of common agricultural activities and production of local traditional foods, together with the exploitation of rural tourism activities, geared by the restoration of vernacular farm buildings according with specific common specs, able to recover them in such a way to balance at the same time their traditional vocation and the environmental sustainability of the landscape they are incorporated into.