the pilgrimage of the black madonna of Tindari (Sicily) and the socio-economic fallouts

It is difficult to imagine forms of local development during a global crisis with devastating effects of long or very long term, deliberately “re-thinking” about forms of development on the base of the relation between place and culture and highlighting spatial characteristics according to a no-intrusive touristic valorization of territories and local communities. The force idea of this research lies on the recovery and valorization of one of many pilgrimages to the Sanctuary of the Black Madonna of Tindari, from the Ionian coast to the Tyrrhenian one and way back. It has been basically chosen to contemplate a territory with its administrative units, more or less directly connected to the passage of the “route”, imagining this route as a catgut of various and different realities that are added to the diversities caused by the position between two distinct sides of the Peloritan Mountains. Almost of all these municipalities, excluding those ones that are located in the coastal areas, are characterized by the typical phenomena of internal areas. It has been chosen to address to several prototypes of users who, on one hand, are oriented toward a bipolar approach of pilgrimages, on the other hand decide to travel on the edge and to explore urban fragments, often degraded, randomly spread from one side to the other, where the boundaries between rurality and city, development and not only economic marginality are not clear. At the same time, as in this research it will be induced, we are trying to offer an interstitial opportunity to communities that “live” pressed between touristic destinations characterized by strong attraction and others with international appeal.