Enhancement of the Piemonte (NW Italy) stone heritage

Piemonte region (Northwestern Italy) shows an extraordinary richness of ornamental stones, whose exploitation strongly influenced during the centuries, and still influences the local culture. Indeed, more than 150 lithotypes, mainly exploited in valleys and mountain areas, are used in the rural, urban and architecture heritage of the region.

The great variety of Piemonte stone materials used since ancient times as ornamental stones  is due to the presence of rocks belonging to very different geological units, ranging from the deep lithospheric mantle to both the continental and oceanic crust, together with successions deposited in different sedimentary basins, as well as many types of metamorphic rocks originating in different geodynamic regimes.

 

This great variety of rocks represents a historical and cultural heritage worthy of study and scientific dissemination not only among experts of Earth Sciences, but also among a wider public.

 

Starting from the Interactive Geolithological Map of the ornamental stones of Piemonte, performed by CNR-IGG (Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources-Turin), in collaboration with ARPA Piemonte and the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Turin, recently published on the Geoportal of Arpa Piemonte, within the webGIS application GeoPiemonte Map 2021

(https://webgis.arpa.piemonte.it/agportal/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6ea1e38603d6469298333c2efbc76c72), some important materials from a geological, economic-commercial and cultural point of view were selected for the enhancement of Piemonte ornamental stones.

 

Hence the idea of trying to bring to light the relevance and value of some of these stones as proposal for the nomination as ‘’IUGS Global Heritage Stone Resource (GHSR)’’ and some quarry districts as ‘’Global Heritage Stone Province (GHSP)’’.