Archeologia delle architetture medievali a Genova

This paper is divided into two sections, "Architectural Structures" and "The City" in which the authors give a summary of the main results obtained from the research conducted on residential buildings and town planning in Genoa starting in the 1970s by the Institute of the History of material Culture and by the Laboratory of Archeology of Architecture of the Architercture Department of the University. This study presented the opportunity to recall the quantity and type of research tools which were invented, experimented and perfected during that twenty year period in order to collect in a single text the results of many different specific research projects conducted over a long period of time and to evaluate how much still needs to be learned and to be done in the field of archeology of architecture and of town planning in Genoa. In fact, some of the results obtained thanks to the dating instruments typically used in building archeology revealed new questions and new research methods. A typical problem of this type is that of the "Vestigial Middle Ages" (Medioevo attardato) which focuses on the persistence in the Ligurian territory of traditional Medieval forms and elements which were used for long and sometimes extremely long periods of time not only in isolated areas but also in the center of town, thus making any dating on a stylistic basis extremely pericolous.