Forgotten architectures. The digital reconstruction of the Chigi stables designed by Raffaello

The representation of the disappeared architecture represents an important challenge for the knowledge of our history; the investigation and the interpretation of data obtained from a building and from archival documents allows to recover the information necessary for the knowledge of a site and to reconstruct the events of its creation, its transformation and, in some cases, also its destruction. In this research process, digital tools now offer powerful means of documentation, creating the conditions for collecting, through digital surveying, precise data on the actual state of the investigated place, but also, through 3D modeling, to guarantee a scientific reconstruction of the architectural artefact. In this context, the paper describes the process of digital reconstruction of the Stables designed by Raphael for the wealthy banker Agostino Chigi in the Villa Farnesina complex in Rome, starting from the digital survey of the architectural remains and data obtained from historiographical research. Very little remains of the Stables today: part of the perimeter wall on via della Lungara, however demolished up to about half of the lower order. Here it is possible to read the scansion in seven bays of the entire wall with the alternation of paired pilasters and blind masonry panels. Nonetheless, through the analysis of historiographical research data and those acquired through an integrated digital survey, it was possible to reconstruct the overall conformation of the Stables in a digital model that reflects as much as possible the characteristics that the building could have had in the past.