Approaches to the Record of Historic Districts in Rome and Naples

The first analysis to record the historic fabric of great cities in Italy came into being in the early years after the Unity of the country. The inventory of cultural heritage firstly concerned the movable heritage and only at the end of the 19th century was directed to buildings and urban fabric. Rome is certainly the main city where the first approaches to the documentary of historic buildings can be found; in fact these first inventories tried to avoid the threatened demolitions provided by great transformations started in 1870, when Rome became the capital of Italy. The breeding ground for these reflections is the AACAR, an association of architects and engineers that started towards the end of the 19th century, an inventory of not only monumental, but also “minor” historic buildings, focusing the oldest districts of Rome, included in the bight of Tiber river. This first approach, generated the following analysis for the knowledge of urban history within the city, of which a great importance comes from Saverio Muratori, who founded the notion of “tessuto urbano” (urban fabric). This is also aimed to find typological regulations regarding the construction of new buildings. In more recent years, the method of analysis regarding urban fabric in Rome has progressed and has been refined with the work carried out by the Guide rionali di Roma (The district guide of Rome). This work was founded on detailed descriptions of major and minor buildings with intricate philological notations. During the same period in Naples a specific research was developed on “modern” buildings accomplished in the years 1933-40 in Rione Carità. Without a doubt, this is the most significant and systematic intervention of urban transformation accomplished in the historical centre of the city during the 20th century. Some of these buildings within this area are emblematic of planning and building during the fascist period. The present state and the conservation of these important modern architectural examples will be the subject of a synthetic communication and also of some general reflections on the preservation of contemporary architecture in southern Italy.