Piano col colore! Mezzo secolo di contraffazioni nei centri storici

Abstract

The transformation dynamics of the ancient towns are completely changing the urban landscape of the historical countries in Italy in the last fifty years. The most superficial part of material constitutes the image of the architectures and plays a meaningful role in the perception of the historical districts that still characterize the contemporary city, but the aptitude for destroying architectural finishes and deleting superficial patina involves therefore to alter the character of the old towns irreversibly. It had to be obvious it would have been essential to conserve the authentic materials and signs of time that denote the historical authenticity of monuments, but new surfaces of plaster have been applied on ancient architecture façades after the destruction of material stratifications; “new” plasterworks but analogous to the ancient one just destroyed. The consequences of this “restoration” method manifested in Italy because of the so-called “typological restoration” that regulated most of the intervention on monuments in the last five decades. Generalized destruction of the historical stratifications were carried out in order to try an illusory return to the lost origins through a restoration conception as a matter of fact distorted by political and economic interests of various kind, all but cultural. Among the wrong restoration methods the worst is visibly the “Colour plan” (edited for the city of Turin in 1978, for the first time) that suggests to paint the façades of the ancient architecture with new colours in order to clone or simulate the colours of the past, finding in history works of research or scientific tests any probable clue or believable justification. The essay reveals all the theoretical and methodological groundlessness of Colour plans and critically analyses the results all the cities they have been applied in. In particular, it contains some critical examinations regarding Sicilian old towns and plans designed to restore them.