Abstract

Forest assets, which have always been considered by our legislator, mainly as goods for the production and physical protection of the soil, with the exclusion of any other value, have recently received growing attention in regulatory office regarding also their cultural value.The essay aims to examine the genesis and the evolution of the cultural heritage's notion starting from the Codice Urbani del 2004-2008 and its impact also on forest assets in the corrective decrees. The study evolves starting from the first new regulations to protect c.d. "green monuments" and subsequent evolutions in favor of "monumental trees" (2013- 2014) to arrive at the most recent updates introduced by the Testo Unico forestale n. 34 del 2018 in favor of "old trees" and their normative openings. The sequence of these different legislative steps in favor of the recognition of the cultural values of forest assets, allows the Author to draw conclusions on the new relationships between man and nature, between history and landscape, to underline the progressive affirmation of a cultural forest landscape.