Dalle pietre al paesaggio. la città storica per John Ruskin

The essay wants to analyse the John Ruskin vision of conservation at the urban scale. The English critic lived personally the transition of the town from being a historic settlement, with evident features of long-persisting continuity, to become a composite and diachronic ensemble, defined by a mixture of ancient building and urban expansions, demolitions and new edifices, infrastructures and factories. The study is based on sifting through the Ruskin’s papers – books, diaries, letters he wrote in his life -, looking also to the wide bibliography about him and to the representations od European cities he produced during his travels in Europe. The reflections about the historical and modern town came to light from this material allow us to give an answer to a basic question: can we recognise an ‘urban dimension’ of the Ruskin’s conservative commitment or have we to consider this peculiar attitude ad a product of the joining of his legacy with a later new cultural approach to the urban issue?