Il restauro dell'architettura civile medievale a Genova tra Ottocento e Novecento: utilizzo di fonti scritte e di fonti materiali

In the XIV century in Genoa the building model of the previous century consolidated while experiencing a strong development that led it to expand outside the defensive walls of the XII century. In the following centuries the city will fill the new areas and at the same time will grow on itself becoming a city of Renaissance palaces, with painted facades and complex spatial articulations including stairways, courtyards and large gardens that will become the distinctive feature of the city. The artistic guides of Federigo Alizeri and Giuseppe Banchero published in the 1840s and 1870s will focus precisely on these buildings of the rich Genoese mer cantile nobility while they will deal very little with the medieval city. In fact, very little was visible of it: massive stone walls, pillars, columns, capitals, arches, remains of mullioned windows. Between the XIX and XX centuries everything changes. The studies and interventions of Alfredo D’Andrade and the Municipal Office of Fine Arts gradually reveal the medieval city. It is a century-long journey during which the Genoese medieval house is defined in its main elements and which at the same time detonates the contradictions and the complexity of the relationship between historical analysis and philological restoration.