The Ferrara branch of Italia Nostra (Our Italy), a non-profit association, was opened in 1960, just five years after Giorgio Bassani (who was from Ferrara) and Umberto Zanotti Bianco, Pietro Paolo Trompeo, Desideria Pasolini dall’Onda, Elena Croce, Luigi Magnani and Hubert Howard established the organisation in Rome by signing the articles of association with the goal of protecting the historical, cultural and environmental patrimony of the nation.

From the start, the contribution of the Ferrara branch was essential, working on campaigns to safeguard the Po Delta Park and to restore the Este City Walls, planned alongside the creation of the City Park (what is often called the ‘Green Addition’).

Scientific research, conventions and other initiatives to raise awareness among citizens and institutions about the need to create a Park for the Po Delta culminated in the publication of The Po’ Delta Park: a Regional, National, and European Proposal in 1981. The organisation's work continued by supporting a regional law, though not all of its contents were shared across the board. In 1988, the Po Delta Regional Park of Emilia-Romagna was established by a special regional law (L.R. 27/88).

As for the Green Addition, Italia Nostra designed a ‘unique historical-environmental system that effectively integrates the sixteenth-century walls with the land of the Barco up to the shores of the River Po, which the city is reclaiming in a modern, organised use of its walls, spaces and river’ (Ravenna 1985, p. 276). The project truly took off when Paolo Ravenna became president of the organisation, launching a wide-reaching photography campaign in 1978 and a documentary/photographic exhibition that opened in Ferrara in 1983. It then travelled to different cities in Italy and abroad from 1984 to 1985, becoming part, in 1986, of a true Management Project for the Wall System, with the integrated reuse of the entire ring of city walls and the restoration and appreciation of nearby monuments. The good state of the walls, the policies protecting them, and the aforementioned requalification project led to the walls being declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1995.

After the 2012 earthquake in Emilia Romagna, the association was mobilised to protect and restore historic buildings in Emilia Romagna with the slogan ‘As it was, where it was’. These words summarise the parallel needs to save monuments in line with the rules of restoration and conservation, and the complete requalification and reuse of old towns: the public spaces in which the collective life of communities truly takes place.

On 29 October 1955, Ferrara’s own writer and environmentalist Giorgio Bassani was among the signatories of the articles of association of Italia Nostra, along with Umberto Zanotti Bianco, Pietro Paolo Trompeo, Desideria Pasolini dall’Onda, Elena Croce, Luigi Magnani and Hubert Howard. National president of Italian Nostra from 1965 to 1980, Bassani was a leader and spokesman for the efforts to restore, enhance and protect numerous cultural and environmental heritage sites in Italy, including the city of Ferrara and its surroundings. Among the efforts he spearheaded were the restoration of the walls and raising awareness about the necessity to consider Ferrara as a whole despite its dual nature, from the regional capital to the Po delta. Those efforts helped land it on UNESCO's world heritage list as the ‘Renaissance City and its Po Delta’. A vast collection of interventions, letters, and documents produced by Ferrara's beloved author while at Italia Nostra is kept at the archives of the Giorgio Bassani Foundation, within the operational headquarters of Ferrara (Casa Ariosto, Via Ariosto, 67).

With the goal of promoting Ferrara and its surroundings, they include:

●      In defence of Ferrara

●      Comacchio

●      The Old Town of Ferrara

●      Ferrara and its Walls

●      The Last Po

●      Delta Padano Park

All listed in G. Bassani, Italia da Salvare. Gli Anni della Presidenza di Italia Nostra (1965-1980), ed. D. Cola and C. Spila, Feltrinelli, Milan 2018.

“Bassani also wrote of Italia Nostra’s mission: ‘cultural and natural heritage is an asset that the technological, industrialised civilisation we live in today cannot do without if it wants to continue to exist. Industrialised civilisation has shown that it can be efficient. Now it needs to come up with a sort of ‘religion’, that is, one that contradicts all that tends to transform man into a mere consumer. This predatory relationship with nature is no longer possible’. His words are more relevant than ever.”

(www.italianostra.org/chi-siamo/i-presidenti/giorgio-bassani/)