What is a geomining park

For all its activities man draws to nature, over-exploiting the resources of the Earth.
Minerals and rocks have been very useful to human life, and ingenious techniques have been developed to extract them.
A mining park is an area that has been subject to extraction of minerals or other geological materials from the earth (mine).
The same extraction of useful substances resulted in a transformation of the landscape, changing both the appearance of the mining area (mine or quarry) and of all the surrounding areas where the initial processing of the materials took place. Often the activities of towns and villages have been centered on mining.
The mining parks were created with the intention of recovering these areas and give them back to the community, enhancing their cultural and environmental value.
It's because of this important role that the geo-mineral sites have played over the centuries, that the recent legislation on Cultural Heritage (Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape, DL January 22, 2004, 42 of Art. 10 paragraph 4) includes them among the cultural heritage to be protected when they show historical and ethno-anthropological features.
Moreover, the same law recognizes as Landscape Assets "homogeneous parts of the territory whose features are derived from nature, human history or by their mutual interrelationships."
In the Italian territory, there are several areas showing these features, where mining ceased completely or partially. Some of these territories, following bureaucratic procedures, obtained specific recognition, becoming eco-museums parks, mining villages.
Unlike national parks that protect ecosystems, geo-mineral parks, perhaps the least known type of park, do not require spatial continuity to pursue their goals of protection. They often consist of multiple sites (mines, processing industries, museums) that can be even several kilometers far away one from the other, but they are recognized as part of the same production system and help therefore to rebuild the history of human activities and the complex geomorphological structure of the territory.