EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRAGMENTS OF THE RURAL LANDSCAPE: THE FARMHOUSES OF THE AGER FALERNUS IN NORTHERN CAMPANIA

Ager Falernus is a country side in Northern Campania of ancient origin celebrated in ancient times for its products, especially for the wine praised as one of the finest from Horace, Virgil, Propertius, Silius Italicus and Pliny. The long history of this countryside that has shaped the current spatial form of the rural landscape of Campania, has inevitably highlighted all the contradictions and conflicts due to the convergence / divergence between ancient utopias and the current world. In order to relive in full the charm of this countryside being so experienced and grab a few fragments we have to go in search of the remnants of the historic landscape that can be detected either in the eighteenth century farmhouses. The rediscovery of the eighteenth-century farmhouses, pieces of the landscaped-cultural mosaic of Ager Falernus landscape, represents the overcoming of the dysplasia between town and country, as it redefines and recomposes the fragmentation of the rural landscape in the current context of its being. The use of these refined rural architectures which in their aspects of structural and environmental soundness conceal ancient charm and atmosphere, becomes a possible access to a spatial utopia aimed to organize the rural landscape in a timeless totality without losing its roots and identity.