La catastrofe dell’abbandono. Potenzialità e limiti del restauro del Sacro Tempio della Scorziata a Napoli

In the historic centre of Naples, close to Piazza San Gaetano and the Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore, in a central position of the major decumanus stands the Sacred Temple of Scorziata. The complex founded in 1579 consisting of the church of the “Presentazione di Maria al Tempio della Scorziata” and the annexed institute for abandoned girls, has been repeatedly upset and altered by disastrous events and long periods of neglect that have altered the historic architecture, both in its material and formal consistency, erasing the Renaissance and Baroque features. The damage of the Second World War, the Irpinia Earthquake in 1980, the theft of most of the marble furnishings and finishes in the nineties and, finally, a fire in 2012, are the most tragic events that have influenced the palimpsest of the Scorziata. It is a complex architectural stratification whose state of degradation has been perpetrated and aggravated over the years also because of bureaucratic and administrative delays that have forbidden any form of intervention on pre-existence. The paper analyzes the historical evolution and the current structure of the complex in view of its restoration with the goals to recompose the fragments of religious architecture, torn and disrupted by the destructive events of latest centuries and, at the same time, to tie the texture of the built to the urban plot of the ancient centre of Naples. A complex challenge, both technically and administratively, which, however, is now urgent and unavoidable because of the physical and formal fragility of the building. A heritage that, in addition to the values that it is the harbinger of, testifies to the culture of acceptance, inclusion and sharing that has been for centuries the emblem: an immaterial tradition proper to the Neapolitan heritage that only through the collective use of the architecture should be hand down over the century.