Contemporary placemaking increasingly focuses on managing bio-regional and participatory processes that integrate cultural landscapes, human–nature relationships, ecological health, and lived experiences, while remaining open to external influences and creative reinterpretation of place. Cultural heritage plays a key role in contemporary placemaking, moving beyond static preservation toward dynamic, future-oriented place regeneration. This shift is particularly relevant in peripheral areas, where placemaking must navigate challenges but also holds potential for alternative, place-based development models. The chapter explores the role of cultural heritage in placemaking through the Castel Campo case study, a historic, family-run, and women-led estate in Trentino, Italy. The study highlights how a hybrid business model grounded in respect for time, place, and community enabled regenerative development by integrating living heritage, regenerative agriculture, and social care. It illustrates how cultural heritage management can bridge historical continuity and contemporary experimentation to support innovative and inclusive forms of placemaking.

Over the years, there has been an increasing interest in cultural heritage, particularly within the digital context. This has brought to light numerous opportunities and challenges that however require a careful consideration of fundamental rights, such as the public’s entitlement to participation in cultural life, i.e. the right to culture. Preserving the communal aspect of cultural heritage is pivotal in unlocking the full potential of the right to engage in cultural activities. Within the intricate landscape of norms and policies encompassing diverse and often competing interests, the primary focus of this analysis is on the copyright acquis , which may be optimised for the public’s enjoyment of digital culture. This article aims to establish connections between two EU copyright provisions: the Freedom of Panorama (FoP), a discretionary exception under Art. 5(3)(h) of the Directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc), allowing the reproduction of cultural goods visible from public places, and the reproduction of visual artworks in the public domain under Art. 14 of the Directive on copyright in the digital single market (CDSMD). Through a comparative analysis of how certain Member States have implemented these provisions, this article proposes potential paths for a balanced and thoughtful assessment of the interests related to digital cultural heritage that should lead to advancing the right to culture. While it would be wise to consider a supra-national legislative intervention that mandates the FoP exception, Member States should at the same time uphold the scope of Art. 14 of CDSMD, especially when it might be pre-empted by other regulations, such as those governing cultural heritage. By examining the foundations of these two provisions and seeking their nuanced interpretation, the authors anticipate the coexistence of a vital component of the EU right to culture, while acknowledging that the journey toward its comprehensive realization is far from over.

As part of their evolving social and digital mission, museums are tasked with fostering sustainability and inclusion throughout the physical-digital continuum and increasingly focus on accessible, participatory and representative culture. While openness is key in the service of society, museums face an open culture dilemma as copyright complicates their decision-making. Despite the topic’s relevance, research is limited: little has been done to integrate the management and copyright domains, and the legal viewpoint predominates. This theoretical study adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to shed light on the open culture dilemma affecting museum strategies and practices. These aspects are closely intertwined with ethical issues and reveal contrasting perspectives within managerial and copyright frameworks. Building on convergence-divergence discourses on openness/closure of culture in these disciplines, the authors designed an exploratory matrix of approaches to open culture management in relation to copyright in museums to be operationalised and tested through empirical analysis.

International and European Union (EU) law jointly promote cultural development as a global and cross-border value, mandating national efforts for the preservation, enjoyment, and enhancement of cultural heritage. Cultural development is also the specific objective underlying Art. 14 of the EU Copyright in Digital Single Market Directive (CDSMD), designed to ensure that works of visual arts in the public domain remain a vital source of cultural enrichment across the Union. Against this backdrop, the Italian legal system is currently showing some resistance against such legal obligations. Its transposition of Art. 14 CDSMD explicitly refers to the applicability of the Italian Cultural Heritage Code, which typically requires permission and, in many cases, a fee payment to use reproductions of works of cultural significance, notwithstanding their public domain status. Concurrently, Italian courts have engineered new forms of exclusivity over cultural heritage belonging to the public domain, ignoring copyright law and other applicable norms. The study examines the Italian legal framework on public domain cultural heritage, unveiling a significant degree of incompatibility with international and EU legal obligations. Through a literal, systematic, and teleological legal analysis, the authors unearth how the Italian legal system fails to balance norms regarding cultural heritage, copyright, and data, thus calling for coordinated EU and national interventions towards a sound application of legal rules safeguarding the public domain.

The Green route to Open Access (OA), meaning the re-publication in OA venues of previously published works, can essentially be executed by contract and by copyright law. In theory, rights retention and contracts may allow authors to re-publish and communicate their works to the public, by means of license to publish agreements or specific addenda to copyright transfer agreements. But as a matter of fact, because authors lack bargaining power, they usually transfer all economic copyrights to publishers. Legislation, which overcomes the constraints of a contractual scheme where authors usually have less bargaining power, may deliver a (digital) second publication or communication right, which this paper discusses in the context of research publications. Outlining the historical and philosophical roots of the secondary publication right, the paper provocatively suggests that it has a “moral” nature that even makes it a shield for academic freedom as well as a major step forward in the overall development of OA.

This essay provides an overview of some research that is in its early stages. The principal purpose of the authors is to understand whether, in a Continental European legal system such as the Italian one – traditionally led by a strong historical and normative vision of copyright (or author's right) as natural right and nowadays influenced by the EU propertization trend – it is yet possible to foresee a different approach that is prone to interpreting the exclusivity of copyright in terms of monopoly. The latter approach, to some extent, might in fact be more relevant to restricting copyright protection by limiting the exclusive rights (ius excludendi alios) while supporting the public interest. Besides, the vision of "copyright as monopoly" seems in particular to play an overriding role within the digital context, where property is less apt in terms of the promotion and sharing of knowledge and, on the contrary, monopolistic jeopardy is sensibly flourishing.