Shrines and Holy Places in Tuscany between Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism: the Difficult Relationship between Knowledge and Valorization

After an introduction to the correct classification of the relationship between knowledge and valorization as a strategic subject in territorial development policies, the article moves on to talk about the Via Francigena through historical and territorial Italian culture. In the accumulation of successful initiatives not everything has been estimated and minimised, but many occasions have been wasted, beginning with that of a systematic survey of historical testament. The Francigena, the most ancient and important European pilgrim route has frequently facilitated the biggest and most important historical-cultural subject of medieval viability which, for example could include the numerous vie romee. Selections made have eliminated the financial support to the basic research on cultural heritage from which knowledge inexorably derives a non-substitutable foundation for the divulgation and dispersal of knowledge. In the matter of the Tuscany, it would have been possible to highlight, not only the important historical moments of historiography, by to also make the large documentary, literary, artistic and architectural depositories available from the presence of ecclesiastical institutes on a local level. The article develops, deepening the theme of the cult of the Mother of God in the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance with relation to narrative tradition, thus recomposing the framework of Marian exaltation to be brought to light and valorized spiritually as well as culturally.