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The book "Strengthening cultural and natural heritage as a tool for the renewal of rural areas" is promoted in Shkodra

2025-05-22 18:05:00, Qyteti im CNA

The book "Strengthening cultural and natural heritage as a tool for the

"Strengthening cultural and natural heritage as a tool for the renewal of rural areas" is the book by a group of Italian researchers from the University of Florence that was promoted at the scientific library of the University of Shkodra "Luigj Gurakuqi".

This book by researchers Antonio Lauria, Francesco Alberti, Pietro Matracchi and Gabriela Paolinelli brings three new researches about the cultural landscape and interior areas of Benja in southern Albania.

" Today we will talk about a new understanding of cultural heritage in relation to landscapes, its architectural aspects and see in a more vivid way what will be concretized in this activity. I will talk precisely about this important process to promote and highlight all the important natural assets that we have and that are necessary for the development of tourism. I have worked since 2018 in Malesia e Madhe and I have had experience and I think that there are very important natural assets that need to be highlighted and I definitely appreciate them. One of the main problems that I have observed in the territory is the formation but also to do good practices to help as much as possible in the development of the territory" , said researcher Antonio Lauria.

Researcher Ardian Ndreca, who wrote the book's foreword, says that a similar study should be conducted for the different areas of Shkodra and says that we are still far from the elite tourism that Europeans may seek.

“ This book shows and highlights some values ??that the residents themselves have lived but have not been aware of their existence and even more so have not managed to conceptualize the wealth that is there. Reading the territory does not mean reading the buildings themselves, the architectural objects or the built space. Reading the territory means reading the people who live in that territory. Here in our country, things move quickly because a 30-story building is built within two months but usually the space resists it. Those who change faster than the space are the people, the mentality that is slower. We must apply this methodology, this approach that was used in Benjë to another territory and the case of Theth is paradigmatic in our history. Returning to the past is not to museumize the territory nor to turn tourism into a cover because tourism is not simply about eating meatballs and drinking beer. Tourism is something that is curated starting from a cultural base.

We should not conceive of the values ??of this city and the great people as potatoes whose valuable part is underground. Sometimes you can have the sea 30 kilometers away and still not have it close, you do not have it close for cultural reasons. The sea is there, it does not move, but we are the ones who do not manage to go to the sea. I do not know what a railway connecting Shkodra with Gjakova could serve, what you could do from Shkodra to Gjakova and if you leave and go how many hours you stay in Gjakova and what you could do there besides eat, drink and sleep. I think the break in isolation would be if a railway were built with Vienna or a railway with Prague or a line like that with Berlin and not building a railway with a place that even if the goods come, you have nowhere to leave them because there is no industrial park. How far is Shkodra from Europe and what does Shkodra offer a European tourist. "A simple song at the European festival made more noise than Albania's entire cultural strategy in the last 10 years. It is enough if we organize ourselves better to have a deeper impact ," said Ndreca.

The book by four Italian researchers focuses on Bënjë, a rural village in the Municipality of Përmet, in southern Albania. The research defines a strategy of small interventions aimed at improving, in the most respectful way, the natural, architectural and social resources of the area, proposing an approach for the revitalization of rural areas./ CNA