Thesis title: L’Historical GIS come strumento di conoscenza e conservazione per il paesaggio storico e il patrimonio costruito. Il caso dell’Acquedotto Carolino nell’area casertana.
This research considers the Royal Carolino Aqueduct, designed by Luigi Vanvitelli in the second half of the eighteenth century, as the Bourbon government’s most significant hydraulic and territorial-transformation undertaking and, at the same time, as the structuring matrix of the historical landscape between Benevento and Caserta. Built to secure the water supply for the Royal Palace of Caserta and its gardens, the system contributed to the reorganization of the Caserta plain and the territories it crossed, shaping settlement patterns as well as agricultural and manufacturing economies, and functioning as an infrastructure of territorial cohesion. Beyond the main conduit, still in operation, a network of branches and related structures (inspection towers, bridges, reservoirs, mills, and workshops) bears witness to a complex system that is now partly decommissioned and vulnerable, undermined by recent infrastructures, underground works, urbanization, and industrialization, with widespread decay and heightened criticalities in peri-urban fringes and in so-called “neglected areas.”
The research developed and tested an Historical Geographical Information System (H-GIS) as a knowledge infrastructure for diachronic interpretation, conservation, and planning of a linear and dispersed heritage system. By integrating documentary and graphic sources, published and unpublished, historical cartography, cadastral records, and aerial photographs, the information was translated into a GIS environment capable of managing heterogeneous data in a relational and dynamic manner. This enabled the reconstruction of the aqueduct’s evolution from a single route into a ramified network and clarified its impacts on ornamental, agricultural, and proto-industrial functions. The analysis of the contemporary landscape highlighted the coexistence of active and residual survivals, the discontinuities produced by post–World War II transformations, and specific critical issues linked to hydrogeological risk and settlement pressures.
From an interpretive standpoint, the Carolino is approached not as a set of isolated assets, but as a widespread cultural landscape capable of structuring relationships among water, soils, settlements, productive practices, and representations, in line with the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach. On this basis, the thesis outlines strategic and operational guidelines oriented toward area-wide governance: active protection through scheduled maintenance, landscape reconnection in fractured segments, compatible and reversible reuse of related structures, access through slow mobility, and the integration of planning with investment programming. The operational outcome is an integrated Masterplan, supported by the H-GIS and designed to evolve into an open-access WebGIS as a tool for communication, monitoring, and decision support. The result is a regeneration model grounded in the integration of historical-critical knowledge, digital tools, and strategic programming, aimed at restoring the Carolino’s role as a structuring common good and as a cultural infrastructure capable of generating territorial quality, identity, and sustainability.