Beyond Abandonment: Mapping Italy’s Ghost Towns between Heritage, Marginality and Risks toward Revitalization

The article presents the results of a national inventory of abandoned settlements—ghost towns—in Italy while also exploring possible strategies for revitalising these unique sites. The time window considered spans from the 18th to the 21st centuries. A tailored method- ology, divided into six main phases, involved an in-depth bibliographical analysis and the compilation of a preliminary list of abandoned settlements. Transparent inclusion and exclusion criteria were then defined, followed by the selection and updating of the list of sites through different sources of information. Finally, a geodatabase was developed with a set of information fields for the standardised inventory and cataloguing of ghost towns that can also be applied in other national contexts. We identified 702 ghost towns divided into three typological categories, distributed unevenly across the country, with a cluster in the north-west of the peninsula. The abandoned settlements are primarily located in hilly and mountainous areas, with abandonment chiefly caused by anthropogenic drivers, particularly emigration, while natural causes, mainly earthquakes and landslides, are also significant. The total abandoned area amounts to 7.8 km2, approximately equivalent to the size of Venice’s historic centre. Chronologically, the phenomenon is most concentrated in the post-World War II period and the following decades. The comparison between the geographical distribution of ghost towns and the national classification of inner areas suggests that the current classification can be partially read as the contemporary outcome of historical trajectories of marginalisation and depopulation of those territories. Therefore, the dataset can provide useful insights for the national strategy for inner areas. Further- more, the geodatabase makes it possible to identify future revitalisation strategies with special attention to tourism. This innovative research therefore offers, for the first time, a framework useful not only for systematising a complex and geographically dispersed phenomenon, but also for supporting place-based policies.