Through November 30, participate in I Luoghi del Cuore FAI to save your favorite places!

Italians love sports: it is a fact. So let’s imagine that each of you will have your own favorite team, in the sport you like best. Or your own favorite sportsman. Well, we are sure that each of you will also have your own favorite place, which perhaps evokes memories of a special day, friendship, love, or whatever you like best. In short, a place of the heart. Here it is, the FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) has been running a project for ten years called precisely I Luoghi del Cuore (Places of the Heart): continuing our sports comparison, we can see it as a kind of championship of cultural assets that are at risk or that are not adequately valued.

But it is a very special league, because it is the only league in which fans also play an active role. And who are the fans? All of us of course, culture fans! If we have a place that we care about, and if we know that this place is at risk of degradation, or if we think that it should be enhanced more than it is, and therefore we want to defend it, we can give our contribution by voting for it on this website. All we will have to do is choose region, province and municipality: once we have made this very simple selection, the list of assets in our city will appear. At that point we will only have to vote for our favorite place, logging in with our FAI account (if we do not have it, we can register it) or with our Facebook account. We at Finestre Sull’Arte have already participated in past editions and have already voted for our place of the heart for this year as well!

What do you say? Do you have more than one place that is close to your heart? No problem! You can vote for more than one place-the only limitation is that you can only cast one vote per place. What? Have you searched for your favorite place and didn’t find it on the list? You can report it yourself: at the bottom of the page we linked above, you will find an Add Heart Place button, where you can fill out the form to report your heart place!

The contest is open until November 30. What will happen once the deadline is over? As in every championship, there will be a final ranking: the places of the heart that finish on the podium will access the contributions made available by FAI to save the places by recovering them from degradation through restoration and conservation works, or to make them better known through appropriate enhancement works. But since in previous editions participation was very high, this year FAI has decided that interventions can also be agreed upon for those places that receive at least 1,000 votes. So even those who do not get on the podium can have benefits!

You can find all the information by connecting to the website www.iluoghidelcuore.it, where you will find the official app through which to vote via tablet or smartphone (and with the app you can also post photos and videos of your heart places), thecommittees area if you are part of a citizens’ group that is taking action to save a heart place (and where you can then provide updates on your activity with news, photos, signature gathering, videos, banners and whatnot), thelist of testimonials who are participating in the competition (and for each of them you will also find the favorite place: we guarantee you will discover unusual trivia about your favorite celebrities!), and much more.

In short, the invitation is: participate in large numbers. Voting for your place of the heart is a simple and useful action: the previous six editions have in fact allowed the recovery of as many as 45 places of culture in almost all regions of Italy. Participating in I Luoghi del Cuore is like taking part in a sports championship, only here it’s about culture... and so it’s just as exciting! So come on: mouse in hand, click on the links we have provided(we bring you back here the one to vote), and support I Luoghi del cuore too! :-)

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