Across Europe, religious heritage is not only a legacy to be preserved: it is becoming a key laboratory for rethinking freedom of religion, urban welfare, socialidentity and cohesion. This is especially urgent in Italy, where ecclesiastical properties form a dense legal, cultural and territorial infrastructure. Churches,convents, rectories and oratories are increasingly underused, while migrant and minority religious communities often lack spaces for worship and communitylife. Northern Italy is an advanced laboratory for this mismatch, combining dense ecclesiastical heritage, secularisation, migration, religious pluralism,urbanisation and strong ecclesial and third-sector welfare networks.
REliUSE develops an integrated governance framework for the adaptive, inclusive and sustainable reuse of religious heritage. Its core hypothesis is thatreligious heritage is not homogeneous: a church dedicated to worship, a deconsecrated building, a rectory, an oratory, a convent or a mixed-useecclesiastical property have different legal regimes, symbolic meanings and transformability. The project proposes not a single model, but a differentiatedmatrix of legally sound, inclusive and sustainable solutions.
REliUSE overcomes fragmented approaches in this field. By combining canon law, ecclesiastical law, administrative law, civil law, territorial planning, urbansciences, urban and migration studies, and architectural studies, it reads religious heritage as a complex infrastructure where many interests of differentkinds intersect.
The focus on Northern Italy is a methodological choice, not a reduction of ambition: it enables deep and comparable case-study analysis while producingresults transferable to other Italian and European contexts. Comparison with models from France, Germany and the United Kingdom will strengthentransferability. REliUSE will produce a typological grid, a repertoire of constraints, reuse scenarios, governance options and policy guidelines forecclesiastical institutions, public administrations, religious communities, third-sector organisations and private actors.
The empirical strength of REliUSE is ensured by the support of key stakeholders, including the Fondo Edifici di Culto (FEC) of the Italian Ministry of theInterior, dioceses, interreligious actors, the Romanian Orthodox Church in Italy, the Diocesan Museum of Trento and Generali Assicurazioni. They willsupport access to case studies and validate the practical relevance of the scientific results.
REliUSE will advance international and national research by proposing religious heritage as an infrastructure of freedom, welfare and cohesion; providedecision-makers with tools to manage complex reuse processes and transform underused religious spaces from signs of decline into opportunities forinclusion, interreligious dialogue, urban regeneration and ecological transition.
REliUSE develops an integrated governance framework for the adaptive, inclusive and sustainable reuse of religious heritage. Its core hypothesis is thatreligious heritage is not homogeneous: a church dedicated to worship, a deconsecrated building, a rectory, an oratory, a convent or a mixed-useecclesiastical property have different legal regimes, symbolic meanings and transformability. The project proposes not a single model, but a differentiatedmatrix of legally sound, inclusive and sustainable solutions.
REliUSE overcomes fragmented approaches in this field. By combining canon law, ecclesiastical law, administrative law, civil law, territorial planning, urbansciences, urban and migration studies, and architectural studies, it reads religious heritage as a complex infrastructure where many interests of differentkinds intersect.
The focus on Northern Italy is a methodological choice, not a reduction of ambition: it enables deep and comparable case-study analysis while producingresults transferable to other Italian and European contexts. Comparison with models from France, Germany and the United Kingdom will strengthentransferability. REliUSE will produce a typological grid, a repertoire of constraints, reuse scenarios, governance options and policy guidelines forecclesiastical institutions, public administrations, religious communities, third-sector organisations and private actors.
The empirical strength of REliUSE is ensured by the support of key stakeholders, including the Fondo Edifici di Culto (FEC) of the Italian Ministry of theInterior, dioceses, interreligious actors, the Romanian Orthodox Church in Italy, the Diocesan Museum of Trento and Generali Assicurazioni. They willsupport access to case studies and validate the practical relevance of the scientific results.
REliUSE will advance international and national research by proposing religious heritage as an infrastructure of freedom, welfare and cohesion; providedecision-makers with tools to manage complex reuse processes and transform underused religious spaces from signs of decline into opportunities forinclusion, interreligious dialogue, urban regeneration and ecological transition.