Urban walls. Examination and possible restoration. Two case studies

The urban walls define the close relationship between town and its environment; relationships that change over time and determine, in addition to specific economic and social characteristics, the aesthetic, visual and memory of a place. There are signs on the ground that define an inside and an outside, a limit beyond which there is a change. The contribution intends to put in comparison, precisely because of the particular diversity, the two urban realities of Cascia and Norcia, placed in the province of Perugia umbra, a geographical area of high seismic risk; in these cases the interventions on urban walls have had a determining role in the history of urban settlements and the surrounding area. Now the walls surrounding Norcia are materially significant present and figuratively (except that the parties recently collapsed); the walls of Cascia are instead almost entirely absent (because collapsed and dismantled in different eras) and remain only a few of the ancient gates and a few fragments. Analysis of the characteristics of the two walls tracked, real urban monuments, will suggest possible intervention strategies for the preservation and interpretation of their formal and aesthetic data.