The historical-artistic heritage and landscape of every nation represent the spiritual memory of a people and the basis for its vocation and future. The environment is synonymous with cultural and natural values of which man and his culture are an active and creative part.

Safeguarding and enhancing the relationship between culture and natural resources is the philosophy that inspired the project of the database "la Valle del Metauro - natural and anthropic aspects of the Metauro basin" www.lavalledelmetauro.org.

The threat of the progressive ruin of this heritage does not only stem from normal causes of degradation, but also from the abusive aggression of disinterest, poor conservation, lack of public participation, and cultural impoverishment.

The database "la Valle del Metauro" aims to promote the role of citizens in protecting cultural heritage by offering an example of a system that guarantees them free access to information, as well as their education and training through participation in local culture.

Even our Constitution, in Article 9, provides that the Republic "protects the landscape and the historical artistic heritage of the Nation" as a general principle of governance of our State. Finally, the "Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape" approved in January 2004 recognizes the strictly unitary character of the protection of our entire historical-artistic and landscape heritage.

These concepts, continuously echoed in conventions and treaties, define what is now called "Cultural heritage", but do not identify a unified management tool that allows the transmission to future generations of its intrinsic value.

The project of the database "la Valle del Metauro" was born from this need and represents an attempt applied to an area rich in natural and historical terms: 200 million years are represented without interruption.

The project experiments locally with an application that uses all communication technologies for the collection, dissemination, and enhancement of everything that represents the value and uniqueness of the area, and has envisaged the creation of a database in which to store information (photos, texts, books, films, drawings) on all the assets of our territory deemed interesting.

The computer tool with databases and multimedia allows us to navigate our past, the memory of our DNA, and to reconstruct the consciousness of being heirs and witnesses of that great adventure which is the history of humanity.

Until yesterday, it would not have been possible to encapsulate in a single work the great historical and scientific themes represented therein, giving it a sense of continuity, but above all, readability. The computer tool, through databases and hypermedia, lays the foundations for a work that will probably never end, but will allow us to plan our future through sustainable and conscious development.

The greatest result, however, is to work as a large community, made up of teachers, scholars, simple enthusiasts of specific interests, computer scientists, etc., with the sole purpose of creating a work dedicated to all those who want to discover or rediscover the immense treasures of our land, but, above all, to our young people.

Leonardo Zan