The VCO region: a research for the valorization of its geological and historical resources

The Verbano Cusio Ossola region (VCO) is one of the ten most important dimension stone districts in Italy. The materials exploited in this area were used both in the past, for important buildings and monuments (Milan Cathedral, Pavia Cathedral, San Paolo Fuori le Mura Church in Rome), and nowadays, in the Malpensa, Frankfurt and Singapore airports. Besides, the VCO region offers one of the best structural sections of the entire Alpine chain: from the sedimentary cover of the Southern Alps to the lowest Sub Penninic Unit. Due to this geological peculiarity, many different siliceous and carbonatic rocks are quarried, such as Granite (Baveno – pink variety – Montorfano – white variety and Mergozzo – green variety), Beola (Beola Favalle, Beola Ghiandonata, Beola Bianca and Beola Grigia), Serizzo (Serizzo Antigorio, Serizzo Formazza, Serizzo Monterosa and Simplon White), and Marble (Crevola, Candoglia and Ornavasso). In the last three years an Interreg Project called OSMATER has been developed to study different aspects connected to dimensional stone exploitation and application in historical and private buildings in Verbano Cusio Ossola (VCO) and Canton Ticino basins, with the goal of underlining the univocal characteristics of VCO ornamental stones in view of a possible introduction in the global market of foreign stones. The aim of this paper is to outline the peculiarities and the results of the research of the OSMATER project, in particular about the VCO area. For this purpose, two main results have been reported: valorization of VCO stone sector by means of combined field and laboratory tests and the set up of a DATABASE containing information about quarries, transformation plants and monuments in the investigated district; identification of different geological tours, including just opened or financed mining museums, in order to link quarries to local monuments for a local tourism improvement.