Il restauro della corte del Palazzo Orsini di Gravina in Napoli

The 16th-century Palace Orsini di Gravina, current seat of the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples, deeply intertwines its construction events with those of the political and social history of the city. The building is the outcome of a continuous process of modification linked to questions of taste and necessity of use that, until the last restoration conducted in 1936 to adapt it again from Royal Post Office to a university seat, contributed to the creation of a highly articulated palimpsest. The paper is the result of direct scientific supervision of the conservation program carried out by the authors and illustrates the cultural choices and methods of intervention pursued as part of the recent yard (2021-2022) managed by the University of Naples Federico II. Starting from in-depth previous studies, on that occasion it has been possible to define the methodological directions for the conservation of the inner courtyard of the Palace and, therefore, to closely follow the yard activities by implementing conservative choices that scientifically supported the intervention. One of the main goals of the project was to ensure the preservation of the palimpsest constituted by the construction phases of the facades, evaluating the impact on the architecture of the post-Renaissance interventions while taking care to maximize the permanence of the traces of workings and restorations that characterised the facades. The methodology included preliminary as well as in-progress investigations that gradually directed the operational choices, allowing to detail the phases of intervention and the products to be used for conservation operations. The Neapolitan case confirms how much the process leading to conservation constitutes a fundamental moment of ‘listening’ to the historic building as well as of ‘revealing’ values proper to the architecture itself. Transposing these historical, material and formal acquisitions within a culturally and technically careful conservation constitutes the focal point for the definition of a quality project for historic architecture.