Retrofit of a collapsed masonry galley with historical value: preliminary study of alternative solutions and retrofitting strategies

This work presents a preliminary study aiming at singling out the most suitable design solution for the retrofitting of a collapsed masonry barrel vault placed in the central archaeological area of Rome, in Italy. Main objectives to be pursued with the restoration are: 1) re-opening the monument to the public, and 2) endowing it with a walkway on the extrados of the vault in order to allow visitors enjoy the sight of Circus Maximus. The paper is divided into four parts, as follows: 1) firstly, a description of the current status of the monument is provided, then 2) based on the results obtained by simple mechanical models, the possible causes of the collapse are discussed, 3) some reconstruction strategies are presented and compared to each other, also in economic terms, and eventually 4) the motivated selection of the final solution to be implemented is presented.