Tra materia e memoria: il valore dei ruderi di Poggioreale antica

Starting from an analysis of the current conditions of the historic centre of Poggioreale, this contribution focuses on the dual value recognisable in the ruins: on the one hand, the first value relates to the material – identified in the resistant architecture that preserves layers of information capable of telling the history of the city – and, on the other, the second one relates to memory itself, in the sense that the ruins become a vehicle for intangible aspects capable of activating narratives and suggestions. From this perspective, the current mutilated condition of the city owns a significant documentary value: it is still possible to read a story, not limited to reconstructing a snapshot of the city before the earthquake decreed its abandonment, and to identify different levels of information, as well as traces belonging to different moments in the city’s past, inclusive of the daily uses and experiences that took place in the past. The local construction techniques that can be seen due to the widespread collapse, the original building types of the first settlement that are still recognisable, as well as the memories and recollections that still link the inhabitants of the new centre to the earthquake, are some of the many areas of investigation that the ruins themselves can offer today. Therefore, reflecting on the conservation of ruins does not only imply the very conservation of the remaining material, that is a process made complex by the precarious condition of the buildings; indeed, thinking of the conservation of ruins also imply considerations on how to hold together and transmit all the values recognised in the ruins themselves, with the ultimate aim to give a contribution the difficult process of reconstructing the memory of places.