Le successive anastilosi di Porta Labicana in Roma e la configurazione dello spazio urbano

Anastylosis is a restoration technique involving the reconstruction, not necessarily complete, of structures or buildings constructed without mortar, for which contiguous elements are available. The characteristics of these elements must allow for a ‘certain’ repositioning, based on material evidence. Occasionally, this technique has also been used to dismantle and reassemble architecture in locations different from the original, to prevent its destruction. An exemplary case in this regard is the series of anastyloses of a portion of the Porta Labicana in Rome, whose history, reconstructed through documentary and iconographic sources, demonstrates how this section of the façade underwent two recompositions and as many relocations, following the different configurations that the urban space assumed over time, over the course of approximately a century, from the 1840s to the mid-twentieth century