Authenticity in ruin(s). A theoretical and Historical survey on the meaning of a divisive topic related to architectural Remains

The term authenticity has long been at the centre of a deep and rich debate for the discipline of architectural heritage restoration, representing an essential theoretical and operational reference for official Documents such as restoration Charters and Intervention Guidelines. In the 1990s, for example, it represented one of the most investigated topics in the scientific field, contributing to the signing of the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity and the publication of many monographs that placed the subject at the centre of deep examination. Over the next thirty years, however, this strand of inquiry lost consistency and is becoming relatively marginal in today’s contemporary debate. The essay proposes a historical analysis of the last decades to explain this necessary mutation in how historical architectural heritage is perceived. In particular, it will focus on the theme of ruins in order to read within this category the possible historical and contemporary declinations of the concept of authenticity: from the archaeological ruins of the Archaeological Park of Cerveteri, an area in which the tumulus tombs of the Etruscan age of the 8th-4th centuries BC have survived to us devoid of any human intervention, to the war ruins of the recent war in the Balkans, where buildings affected by the conflict have been reconstructed as they were and where they were or remain in the state of ruins awaiting intervention. From these heterogeneous case studies, we hypothesise to arrive at a new and better interpretation of the concept of authenticity, useful for contemporary and informed restoration intervention