Thermal baths as alternative resource for unbalanced territories

Regions with rural and urban contexts of great value, but at the same time characterized by fragile and complex balances, represent places waiting for an opportunity of sustainable development. These are territories that, according to an ecological definition, can be called unbalanced, built on a relationship that is not equal between lowbenergy areas, overcrowded, lacking in energy, in the process of impoverishment and highbenergy areas, rich in unused resources (Mori A., 1979). Sardinia, one of the main islands of the Mediterranean Sea, is an example of a territory in which there is a significant imbalance between the coast and the inland areas. The first one is characterized by a strong anthropic pressure and a concentration both temporal and spatial, the latter represents a reality often overlooked and extraneous to the enhancement processes. Within this kind of context, thermal places are today an unexplored resource that can offer an opportunity to redevelop the landscape of rural areas and the urban context of small historical centres and to relate the coast and the interior. The thermal baths, in general, represent real natural attractors, integrated in heterogeneous contexts of great historical, cultural, natural, and consequently also tourist, interest. The paper describes the hot springs spread over the Sardinia's territory, which reveal their ancient origins with different characteristics: sites included in consolidated urban contexts (Sardara, Fordongianus) and punctual elements scattered in the landscape (Benetutti, Dorgali) reveal the memory of structures that over the centuries have constituted important opportunities to generate spaces for the community. As part of Sardinia thermal baths system, two cases, that are considered exemplary, will be examined in particular, where the places of care but also of wellbbeing and relaxation can play an important role in the development of local realities and alternative forms of a renewed quality tourism. The two cases study are different but complementary realities in the regional context; on one side Fordongianus, a small town of Roman origins, where the thermal waters become the occasion for the redevelopment of the entire area. On the other side the village with rural vocation of Benetutti, that represents an example where the bath facilities, consisting mainly of small tubs, are lost in the landscape and allow an alternative type of exploitation, management and experience of the resource. The thermal baths of Sardinia are thus envisaged as historical and cultural facilities of great value and identity that can foreshadow the image of a productive and cultural “slow” landscape where natural elements and anthropic space coexist in a sustainable and conscious balance, addressing some of the issues currently considered fundamental for the development of territory, such as health and welfare, the production of clean and efficient energy, sustainable use of natural resources, especially water, the promotion of alternative economies and of cultural heritage.