As a matter of fact there are many subjects involved and the need to propose coordinating tools for their management

Economical recession in the territory: the Sacri Monti in Piedmont and Lombardy are situated in an area severely struck by the economical recession in the last years, namely affecting tourism, which is a traditional strongpoint of the local activities. It has been lately affected by a slowdown due to the general consume reduction.

Obsolescence of management patterns: the management experience of cultural assets needs to be strengthened in order to recover the positive points and to correct weak points. The need is to build specialist competence in niche segments, such as architectural restoration and conservation and to improve the actually limited synergies of the site with the public transport system.

Unfit promotion: quantity and quality of the sites promotion is insufficient; the information level needs an update; the diffusion of available information is still too focused on conventional media, and the new web-based media are not yet exploited, mainly in direction of an international public.

Tourism model partially still bound to patterns previous to the site registration in the UNESCO WHL. This fact is put in evidence by the result of three investigations done over a time span of 14 years about the type, the origin, the public interest and the characterization of the visits to the Sacro Monte di Varallo (Maggi 1994; Bravi, Curto 1997; Bartolozzi, Bonora, Coscia, Curto, De Filippis, Spano, Vycpalek, Zich 2008).

Urban planning tools scattered on too many levels and too tricky: many levels of administration are charged to plan territory activities, but they are not cooperating effectively to construct a local development plan.

Difficulty of assembling and exploiting the synergies of the local players: the prevailing model is one of competition between townships; the trend is to offer the same tourist products and services, and the attitude to cooperation is quite poor.

UNESCO acknowledgement is the kick-off to a new path to manage and deliver value to the site. This path is involving a wide mix of components: architectural, social, cultural, natural and landscape related. Care must be paid to the tool 'PIANO Dl GESTIONE' considering the plan pattern that has been generally proposed for Italian sites, in order to attempt solutions to the weak points above described2. The proposed solutions should be organized considering the announcement for the compilation of the PIANO UNITARIO Dl GESTIONE3 (unitary management plan). It must be harmonized with the model issued by the Italian Ministry Commission for the UNESCO sites. In order to obtain a picture as complete as possible, after a period of study in Spain, the research investigates also the policy of management and promotion of another UNESCO site: the Path of Santiago de Compostela5. The Spanish site has many complexities recalling the Italian site, both for its cultural-religious element, and for its territory dimension, spanning over different Regions6. Different working methods used in the sites were examined: the formal models and the theoretical elaboration of the tools and the policy management; and the actual application. Differences due to the different Italian and Spanish national regulations systems were put in evidence. Such differences give some consequences in the management itself. The research considering the differences between the sites makes a proposal of some additions to improve the actual unitary management plan, which is actually under revision. The action plan has been built considering and focusing proposals on Sacro Monte di Varallo as case study. The choice is motivated by its richness of history, culture, art in comparison with the other 8 'Sacri Monti' acknowledged by WHL Also its identity has deepest roots in the territory. The proposals were structured according to the contents and goals of the World Heritage Committee7. This organism promotes a policy of development supported by main industrialized countries, in order to propose values able to tackle the annihilation of cultural diversity. This dangerous trend is exploited by the replacement of tradition models with standardized models. The heritage to protect is generally the binding between ancient cultures and the natural environment which hosted them. A result of the research is to propose a rationalization of the planning tools, strengthening the coordination function as required by the management plan. This is a most effective tool to fulfill the planning regulation as well as the national safeguard regulations. Because of the need of an integrated management of a an organic ensemble of serial sites, the management plan8 operates in the territory altogether, avoiding the risk of fragmentation into a scattered multitude of local authorities with no reciprocal interaction. The importance if this factor is enhanced by serial nature of the site. Serial sites makes potentially very tricky to find solutions to mend the weak points of the territory. This is the reason why it is important the territory overall in the analyses of a serial site. In the actual situation of world-wide crisis, with increasing cuts to the investments dedicated to the maintenance of the cultural heritage, there is a strong need to elaborate an alternative management, and to involve new partners, able to contribute to a self-sustaining system, or at least to decrease the dependence on public funding. Involving private partners can be a powerful resource to manage sites. Condition to this involvement is that the function of these partners should integrate and not replace the public administration function, considering the extension of the assets to safeguard over a wide territory which are submitted to many different critical situations: economical, infrastructural, social and institutional. Involvement of private actors, although badly needed, can be effective only provided that it must be well regulated. This is necessary both to get a good balance in the sites management and to avoid that peripheral sites to be neglected, being less attractive for private funders. Moreover, the management of a public function must not be submitted to a policy of heritage privatization. The heritage is not a commodity and cannot be confused with a public asset to sell on the market. Its belonging to a Country and is not comparable to an enterprise with the State as a partner, which could sell its asset for its financial benefit.

Resuming, the research defines an hypothetic scenario bound to the goal to promote an effective site management, enhancing the local development through three main actions: An alternative/innovative management able to involve the local population in the process of development, through patterns of public- private cooperation and partnership in the site management.

Synergetic and effective promotion of the UNESCO site and the territory, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and creating a diversified offer linking the site to the territory opportunities.

Programming the economy and territory development, boosting the local economy and delivering opportunities to discover new markets through the management model (integrated in the unitary management plan) and through ICT's. The actions should be carried on in cooperation with the local administrations, namely with Regional administration.

At the end the research would contribute to identify proposals to increase the local development of a territory, delivering value and widely exploiting the UNESCO site whose characteristics are universally appreciated. The main point is that a site corresponding to such features can become a best practice example if properly structured and programmed. The condition is to combine management, promotion and development.