Per una conservazione preventiva. La chiesa dell’Immacolata a Pizzofalcone a Napoli tra istanze di conservazione e protezione dal rischio sismico

Through the study of the church of Immacolatella at Pizzafalcone, a significant case inside the historical city of Naples, the proposed contribution aims at investigating the issues related to the preventive conservation of historic degraded buildings in state of partial abandonment, affected by natural disasters and than restored and consolidated. This is done in view of a proposal for the restoration and the structural improvement of the church, which stands on the site of the primitive city of Naples, the ancient Palepoli. The study will make use of an analytical methodology that starts from the constructive aspects of the historical artifact and arrives to the definition of its material characteristics and the interpretation of the relationship of the building with its environment . The research, supported by diagnostic studies, aims to analyse the current static conditions of the architectural organism, setting them in a complex reading of its structural, material and spatial characteristics. This will allow the development of a mathematical model of interpretation, fitted with the real building, for an assessment of the seismic risk to which it is subjected, even in relation to the land on which it stands . The path of analysis, therefore, aims to acquire a thorough knowledge of the causes of degradation and instability, obtaining am essential data base for the programming of "best practices" for structural reinforcement that does not aim to replace the load-bearing function of the ancient structures , but aims to help the static behavior, in view of an improvement of the existing conditions of safety to bring back the functions of the building . The church of The Immacolatella is located on Mount Echia, where the oldest urban settlement of Naples was born, and was designed in 1857 by architect Francesco Jaoul, next to the military garrison of the hill of Pizzafalcone. Since the beginning, the building showed structural problems, which were aggravated by lack of maintenance after the bombing of 1943, during the Second World War and with the stresses of the seismic events in August 1962 and November 1980. The church represents, therefore, an interesting palimpsest on which it’s possible to experience possible conservation strategies and preventive protection