Il palatium Caetani a Capo di Bove: architettura e vicende costruttive dall’epoca romana al medioevo

The thesis focuses on reconstructing the construction history and transformations that have affected the palatium Caetani on the Appia Antica, from its creation to modern restorations. The main objective was to analyse the 14th-century palace in its architectural historical context, starting with the analysis of the masonry stratigraphy, studying documentary sources, and conducting comparative analyses with typologically similar buildings. The reliability of the analysed data, from a material analysis perspective, was ensured using modern surveying technologies. Moreover, the studied building features a rather rare architectural motif in the Italian landscape, namely the stepped or "Staffelgiebel" facade. Given its reasonable state of preservation and archival documentation for dating, it was possible to conduct comparative investigations extending to the European context to clarify the role of this architectural motif in architectural history. Finally, the results of the historical architectural analysis were translated into virtual reconstruction models. While these models may initially appear to serve scientific dissemination alone, they are, in fact, a modern interpretation of the study models employed by architects throughout the centuries. Virtual models have proven to be a valuable tool for visually and in real-time verifying hypotheses within a plausible context.