Gazes on Levanto: How Local Identity Becomes a Tourism Asset

This work is founded on the idea that the identity of a territory is an important resource for its inhabitants, their lives in the sense of the diltheyian ‘Erlebnis’ (Dilthey, 1982) and also for its tourist development. From this point of view the small town of Levanto represents the case examined because is a paradigmatic example of the most suitable logic for tourist development in the Italian context. As we will see, we started from the grassroots, i.e. from the inhabitants and from the defi nition of identity as communicative life-experience of the territory, to check in which way the development process carried out from the local administration is shared by the inhabitants. We will proceed in our work following the theoretical trends characterized by ‘place marketing’ strategies and destination management, but also the considerations that the sociology of tourism causes us to refl ect upon. Levanto is a small town near one of the best-known Italian tourist destination, the Cinque Terre. Its territory extends from the hills to the sea and its economy has always been based on fi shery, agriculture and, by the 1920s, tourism. Levanto is an interesting case study because it has a particular character that stands up well against the more famous Cinque Terre, a character that gives it an attractive image, like something to discover and to develop. It is the character that we called ‘slowliness’, according to its belonging to the international network of towns of ‘good living’ – CittàSlow. This is an association promoting the harmonic relationship between tradition and innovation, taking care of urban design and environment, and looking for a lifestyle less frenzied, all elements recognized having great intrinsic social value as well as benefi ts for tourism. On these bases, sociological research finds in local communities its subject of analysis and in the domestic gaze the assumptions to talk about identity and touristic supply.