The underlying aim is to ensure that the new park harmonizes with the existing park through the complementarity of their themes. This approach appears to be justified by the outstanding appeal of the character of Pinocchio - whose popularity is still undimmed today - and by the abiding relevance and topicality of the Collodian message, which continues to be the object of children's imagination and adults' memories, both in Italy and abroad. Pinocchio represents the educational pattern typical of Old World traditions: a longing for maturity connected with a yearning for adventure and curiosity that are typical of childhood and adolescence.

Within this frame of vision, the possibility has ariseen of retaining a relation with the existing park, but a relation of a very special nature, to be characterized by continuity and discontinuity at one and the same time. Continuity would correspond to the intention to pursue elevated artistic value and to describe the adventures of Pinocchio's European Friends through literary pathways, while discontinuity would be characterized by active and stimulating enjoyment of the park.

In this perspective, the Park will be designed to perform a far more profound function than merely evoking remembrance of the protagonists's adventures_: for the cognitive provocation can be widened so that each individual visitor can experience a stimulus towards exploring new environments, hitherto unknown historical and geographical contexts, "realms of knowledge" linked to the adventures of the protagonists but in a manner appropriate to the visitor's own age and culture. In the expanded Park the tale will not be narrated, as it is in the present park, and the characters will not be celebrated with monuments_: rather, some of the archetypal situations that are endowed with a universal symbolic meaning (solitude, freedom, paradox, etc. ... ) will be highlighted. These situations have been chosen in such a way as to create a pedagogic-educational itinerary that will enhance a child's progression towards maturity. Each situation is a journey, a path, an experience of life leading to awarenes of the world and its inhabitants, but most of all leading to self-awareness. The final goal of each adventure, of each literary pathway, is always the concept of human beings, the awareness of their limits and grandeur, self-consciousness, the very elements that are vital if one is to face and emerge victorious from the challenge of life. The methodologies, characters, situations, and worlds may be different, though complementary, but they share a common basis consisting of the most important journey each one of us must complete in order truly to become a human being.

Objectives

The new park will be created with the aim of combining the high cultural standards of the existing park with the issues of a "theme" park for today and for tomorrow: namely, interactiveness and change.

The park has been conveived as a place where:

- playing is "instructive", yet still retains its special characteristics of playfulness;

- reactions to stimuli and phenomena are enhanced;

- sense perception skills, such as intellectual thought processes, are activated;

- everybody (not only children) may build his or her own way of narrating, as well as interpreting;

- things happen ...

In particular, the creation of the new Park of Pinocchio's European Friends in Collodi sets itself three main objectives:

- to build a Europe-wide park which will lead towards an understanding and integration of all different cultures through the help of Pinocchio and the various characters appearing in European children's literature; in other words, a park where cultural differences are accepted and embraced as parts of a single complex unit;

- to build a park of knowledge, a sort of Toyland in reverse, where the role of playing is to redeem and lead to the discovery of knowledge; a land where everybody can be accompanied and guided by Pinocchio and his friends into active participation in the "game" of learning science, literature and the arts;

- to shape a park for everybody - children, youngsters or the elderly -, where each user is enabled to take an active part in the learning experience as a protagonist according to his/her own culture or sensitivity.