Abstract:

Framing of the research. Maritime museums have recently been recognized, as an important lever for the sustainable development, in social and environmental term, of coastal areas and the maritime heritage can represent a significant component for their tourist attraction (Appiotti, Magni, & Musco, 2019). In a 2001 contribution by Hicks (Hicks, 2001), titled "What is a Maritime Museum?", he is among the first to ask a series of ideological questions on the nature of maritime museums and defines them as a subcategory of museums of history and ethnography. Just like the latter in fact, maritime museums define 1) a collective identity; 2) the identity of the individual, the journey of discovery that leads to self-knowledge. Indeed, many of those museums are originated as shrines of one's nation's naval supremacy over others, places of veneration of national heroes and containers of antiquities even if there is also a wider amount of museums that see maritime culture as the heritage of a number of human activities, with a focus that is not just on collections, but also on traditional know-how and knowledge (Beneki, Delgado, & Filippoupoliti, 2012).
In recent decades, the prominence of maritime heritage in all its forms has led to efforts to coordinate conservation and interpretation strategies on an international level but, it has then been underlined how little consideration is given to the role of the coastal and maritime cultural heritage in the management and planning of those territorial areas (Ounanian et al., 2021). In fact, one of the main challenges inherent in interpreting maritime heritage, is the difficulty of balancing local and international narratives while satisfying both local stakeholders and potential visitors. Regarding these challenges, the Mediterranean Countries occupy a position of particular importance, as the economic dependence on the coastal tourism sector is greater than in other parts of the world. Specifically, Italy, being in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, is rightfully among those countries that make a living from seaside tourism and witness its consequences.