The contexts addressed by the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) often lack successful regional policies and systemic territorial approaches to achieve effective transformations towards resilient territories. These issues are addressed by the ongoing project “B4R Branding4Resilience.” This contribution aims to present and discuss its first results in the focus area of Val di Sole, Trentino-Alto Adige Region (Italy). The main goal of the University of Trento unit is to pursue leadership in innovating with nature in small thermal villages. The aim is to create a territorial strategy based on the value of the water resources and thermal systems by promoting the enhancement of their natural capital. An interdisciplinary and multi-scalar methodology has been adopted to combine qualitative and quantitative approaches; a data collection process was used to explore the natural identity of Val di Sole to comprehend the ecological and spatial elements; a co-design activity was conducted with the local community’s engagement to propose a resilient territorial strategic vision. As a result, the “Val di Sole Blueprint” represents a strategic tool to implement thermal landscapes as ecological design resources for the territory and to support sustainable territorial development for a better quality of life.

Crossing the Italian inner territories offers the opportunity to describe no longer their marginality, but to narrate their human and natural resources and, among many, the water: this journey through the Italian thermal landscapes aims to unveil how the landscape is a collective good to be protected, but also a unique opportunity for territorial regeneration. The discovery of the curative properties of some waters - which derive from their deep flow through mineral layers - is intercrossed by history and myth, but their rediscovery is nowadays more relevant than ever for a slow, experiential, sustainable, and inclusive fruition. In the disconnected system of inner rural and mountain territories, the thermal baths can be an opportunity to rediscover and reconnect with nature and wellbeing: they can be places to stay, to be reached for the physical and spiritual rehabilitation, to experience landscapes where to immerse, remain and return.

Vulnerable topographies and morphologies are reservoirs of resilience in reacting to social, economic, and environmental crises in the Italian Hinterlands. Moreover, the pandemic situation of recent years has influenced people’s values and priorities, allowing us to reconsider the value of lands outside urban centres. In Italy, overcoming a contrasting vision between cities and inland areas brings out a relationship of interdependence between territories, a fragile balance to be investigated and reconnected. The contribution of this paper aims to investigate the current state of vulnerability of these hinterlands, crossed by continuous phenomena and by discrete or sudden phenomena, to represent the tangible and intangible space to fully understand the performativity of these territories. The methodology used lies in an intermediate space between the values process of landscape ecology, which sees as its starting point the investigation of tangible land effects, and the quantitative-qualitative approach of mapping. A scale of values is assigned through the use of GIS-assisted multi-criteria evaluation. The proposed methodology is set and applied in the case of Val di Sole, Trentino, to spatialise the relationship between risk and resources in Italy’s hinterlands.