The building is well positioned in the city’s morphological fabric as it rises at the intersection of the two urban axes connecting the gates of access to the historic center. The project foresaw a philological restoration of a part of the complex, maintaining its original structure and architectural typology, for the realization of a Visiting Center destined to the Anthropogeographic Museum of the Monti Sibillini National Park, in which all documents relating to the territory are exhibited and tourist information is provided.
During the surveys carried out on the site, numerous interventions were discovered to have been made in the course of time which, while not altering the type of building, introduced structural elements and materials which were different from the original ones (substitution of wooden floors with hollow core slabs, masonry with partitions in hollow bricks) .
From a static point of view, no serious instabilities were noted, whereas the structural failure of some vaults was due to material decay, water infiltration, and local instabilities.
Therefore, from a structural point of view, the consolidation of the vaults above the loggia and the terrace on the south side, the revision of the iron anchoring, the treatment and integration of the wooden structures of the first floor and the reconstruction of the higher part of the loggia were all carried out. The curved roof tiles were completely inspected, then all removed; a waterproof sheath was built in and the tiles were put in place again, with the addition of new ones in substitution of the damaged ones.
The preservation status of the terracotta floorings was compromised, as in some cases the original flooring had been replaced by marble chips, concrete or wooden planks. These were dismantled to intervene on the underlying structures, then reassembled, integrated and treated. Floorings built in other than terracotta were removed and replaced by other terracotta coming from previous recoveries, except for the wood panel of the archive that was restored.
The exposed bricks on the facades were restored by scraping the connections, reintegrating the expelled or deteriorated parts, grouting and washing; the external plasterwork, in a very poor condition of preservation, was completely redone, whereas the inside plasterwork in lime was simply restored in the damaged parts.
Gutters and drainpipes in galvanized steel sheets were also in a poor condition and thus were substituted; the same was done for the external fixtures in wood, badly decayed or missing, which were replaced by chestnut fixtures; the iron fixtures of the current archive were restored and so were the fixtures of the loggia on the south side.
Furthermore, the boarded windows on the first floor of the loggia were removed, with the consequent restoration of the capitals and the sculptured sandstone pedestals of the terracotta pillars dividing them. In place of the terrace on the second floor a loggia in an iron structure and brick roof similar to the existing one were rebuilt.
The paint was removed from the doors and entrance doors which were made of good quality, and then treated and the hardware was replaced. In order to use the various spaces of the convent as a museum, a series of works were carried out respecting its original arrangement and in such a way that would have, however, guaranteed an optimal use of the spaces for its new function. The entire area reorganized for the museum was equipped with safety signs, fire doors, fire extinguishers and smoke detectors.
SCHEDA LAVORO
