Recovery, Valorization and Reuse of a Characteristic Architecture of the Italian Building Heritage: The Roadman’s House. A Case Study

Among the cultural assets there are some considered “minor” due to their typological, formal, material and construction characteristics. Among these can be included the “Casa Cantoniera”, the home of the ‘Cantoniere’, i.e. the roadman, the road inspector, person who had to look after his own canton (3–4 km stretch of road). A service architecture typical of the Italian territorial context of which it constitutes a peculiar element and distinctive of the landscape. Iconic architecture, easily recognizable by typology and Pompeian red colour, network of small infrastructures serving large and structured road infrastructures, capable of designing the anthropized landscape and ensuring that it dialogues with the natural landscape, characterizing it and making it somehow unique. As a result of the redefinition of the tasks assigned to the operators in charge of the surveillance and maintenance of roads throughout the country, as well as new methods and practices of intervention, the roadmen’s houses are almost completely disused and for several decades have been undergoing a process of slow abandonment resulting in inexorable degradation. At the end of 2015, an agreement was signed between ANAS, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and the State Property Agency, in order to define the Guidelines for the sustainable reuse of roadman’s houses, which was followed in 2016 by a call for tender for realization of a pilot project for their recovery and valorization; and, in 2021, by a new call for tenders aimed at promoting concession requests.Within this context, the objective of thiswork, still in progress, is to contribute to the historical knowledge of these small buildings and to provide typical intervention solutions for their recovery and valorization, so as to be able to insert them into a new circuit of tourist use and slow mobility.