Il viaggio nell’architettura nascosta. Palatium Vetus nel tempo: ipotesi restitutive nella visione virtuale.

Philological reconstruction of ruins or of ‘hidden architecture’, considered utopistic for centuries, can become a reality today albeit a virtual one thanks to applications of tridimensional modeling. The base of the project of tridimensional reconstruction of the diachronic phases of Palatium Vetus is a methodological and theorical integrated approach, linked to all scientific contents of this publication. This project is particularly aware of the different hypotheses of the architectural interpretations of the broletto, derived from the careful survey of the building, archaeological investigation, comparisons of similar buildings at a national scale, and analysis of historical sources. In this sensitive area of virtual reconstructions, in which strongly ‘realistic’ outcomes tend to mislead the perception of the real condition of the material object and to hide the unavoidable uncertainty of any hypothesis, it was necessary to act in two different phases. The first phase was operative – characterized by modeling and restitution – and the second phase aimed to «show» the results of the first phase. Thence a methodology was chosen, to allow the reading of virtual reconstructions of the different phases of the palace, in various degrees of compliance with the historical sources. This was made possible by the adoption of the criteria of visualization of the chronologic sections which appeared in investigations. These must still be intended as rough phases, not yet sustained by chronological certainty. Similar criteria have been used to highlight the different degrees of reliability of the various elements of the building. The animation of tridimensional reconstruction has made the journey to the broletto even more accessible and enjoyable.