Norcia. Identity of the town’s architecture and landscape. Reflections after the 2016 earthquake

Norcia, found in the southeast portion of the Umbria region, on a vast plain surrounded by mountainous heights, served as a point of transit, in ancient times, for those travelling through central Italy along the Apennine ridge. The town’s primitive defensive perimeter was built in the 3rd century AD, at the time of the Roman conquest of the territory, though the current layout, based in large part upon those pre-existing structures, dates to the 13th century. The town’s habitations are completely surrounded by a wall; in the northeast portion, the blocks of dwellings are arrayed along the axes of the Cardo, or main boulevard, and the Decumanus, or principal crossroads, of the original Roman structure, while in the southwest portion they are aligned along the roadways that originate from the Piazza San Benedetto, the large, four-sided space that serves as the town’s focal point, having been restructured in the middle of the 16th century. The urban layout, given its definitive form in the sixteenth century by constructions placed atop the remains of medieval structures, can still be traced in full, despite the many rebuilding projects carried out in the wake of the disastrous earthquakes that have struck the area at various points in time (especially during the 18th and 19th centuries), representing one of the town’s distinctive characteristics, as well as a key feature of the entire Santa Scolastica plain. It follows that the initiatives undertaken in the wake of the recent seismic events that struck the territory between August of 2016 and January of 2017, causing noteworthy damage, must be geared towards restoring those elements which, though currently in a compromised state, contribute to establishing the identity of the town of Norcia and its surrounding environment, always with respect for the history and memory of the sites, as well as the preservation of their levels of quality and their features.