Decision of the week · Landscape · 12 June 2026
Council of State, Sixth Chamber, judgment of 12 June 2026, no. 4729
Cons. St., sez. VI, sent. 12 giugno 2026, n. 4729
Official document published by the Italian administrative justice portal, freely accessible (in Italian).
By judgment no. 4729 of 12 June 2026, the Sixth Chamber of the Council of State annulled the landscape authorisation issued for a thirty-four metre radio base station planned about a hundred metres from an oratory dating from the seventh to eighth centuries: the landscape report attached to the application made no mention of the cultural asset, which did not even appear in the photographic documentation.
The landscape report must describe the state of the sites and the cultural heritage present in the area (Article 2 of the annex to the Prime Ministerial Decree of 12 December 2005), and the assessment must extend to an adequate surrounding area, based on intervisibility (Article 3.2 of the same annex): it is not limited to the portion directly affected by the works. Omitting the cultural asset vitiates the preparatory inquiry and brings down both the landscape authorisation and the concluding determination of the conference of services, without prejudice to the administration’s power to decide again on the basis of a complete inquiry.
The judgment also contains two points of procedural interest. Associations representing diffuse interests have standing to sue where they demonstrate a non-occasional statutory purpose, adequate representativeness and a stable territorial and temporal connection with the protected asset; and proximity (vicinitas) is not measured in metres alone, but by the capacity of the works to interfere with the interest asserted.
As to time limits, the challenge to the permit runs, as a rule, from the start of the works: the site notice board can ground a presumption of knowledge only if the party pleading lateness provides concrete evidence, such as the actual visibility of the board.
For those applying for an authorisation, the completeness of the representation of the sites is not a formality: it is a condition of the decision’s lawfulness. For those protecting the territory, the tools to be heard exist, and this decision confirms that they work.