Assessing the Resilience Potential of Cloisters in Historical Urban Areas in Response to Climate Change

The current debate increasingly focuses on revitalizing city centers, areas where a significant portion of the population is concentrated. It has been observed that several components of historic cities provide resilience measures against the impacts of climate change; therefore, their protection is crucial. This paper will concentrate on cloisters as examples of open and transitional spaces that are essential for mitigating the negative effects of increasingly extreme weather events within historic centers. This study aims to understand the role and thermal resilience potential of three historical urban cloisters in Italy, compared to the surrounding urban fabric, while considering both present and future scenarios. Through microclimatic assessments conducted using ENVI-met software, the thermal behavior of three case studies is assessed by calculating the absolute differences in Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) and Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) values. The findings indicate that cloisters with lower absolute differences in thermal stress values demonstrate a greater potential for adapting to future overheating. Despite the varying morpho-typological cloisters features, the study reveals that the shaded areas within these cloisters exhibit increased resilience to rising temperatures, highlighting their importance in urban thermal behavior.