Discover Monti Prenestini

Discover Monti Prenestini brought an interdisciplinary team of students from MIT, Harvard and Cornell to Castel San Pietro Romano, Rocca di Cave, Capranica Prenestina and Guadagnolo for six weeks in the summer of 2023. The team met the territory’s institutions and stakeholders, visited archives and local museums, walked its itineraries, surveyed local businesses and services, and ran market research on the visitors interested in longer stays.

The Challenge closed with discovermontiprenestini.com, an experimental website that narrated the territory so that real target users could react to it. Along the way the team updated the Google profiles of more than 50 places of interest, which drew over 300,000 views in four months, and trained residents in the use of hosting platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.

Later Challenges in Monti Prenestini — Transitioning a Landscape, Weaving Urban Data and Reviving Trails among them — build directly on this work.