ANCIENT AND MODERN RESTORATIONS FOR THE COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS IN ROME

In 1589, on the occasion of a complex intervention on the Column of Marcus Aurelius, Domenico Fontana reconstructed an entire corner of the abacus resorting to a wise joint of blocks, the stability of which was simply guaranteed by their shape. The same corner was over again restored in 1987 by Antonino Giuffre because it was feared that the decay and fracturing of the material inserted during the 16th-century intervention could compromise the safety of the abacus. Despite the seemingly unbridgeable distance that separates them, the two restorations share an undeniable affinity of method in which an essential role is played by the need not only of recovering the cultural and technical continuity with the historical architecture but also of correlating the different specialist contributions available within a unified approach. With respect to the latter aspect, both restorations discussed in this work constitute a suggestion for the current culture that, breathlessly running after the detail, often risks losing sight of the entirety.