Il borgo medievale di Craco: la “reinvenzione dei luoghi” tra nuove forme di antropizzazione e musealizzazione

Craco, a Medieval Village. The “Re-inven on of Places” Throughout new Forms of Anthropiza on and Museum Display. In an age like the present one, marked by a growing sensitivity towards the issues of recovery and enhancement of minor historic centers, abandoned or in the process of depopulation, the case study of the medieval village of Craco is a pragmatic example of the settlements in Lucania affected by this phenomenon. Starting from 1963 a landslide, slow but unstoppable, undermined the survival of the village, so much to cause a progressive depopulation and transfer of all the inhabitants in the nearby village of Peschiera. A condition of geographic and infrastructural marginality together with the state of decay of the village, now deprived of its original vocation and constant maintenance, determined a radical transformation of the image of the village. The ruin aspect of the entire settlement, bathed in an unspoiled lunar landscape, has become the distinguishing and attractive note for an ever increasing number of visitors. Starting in 2013, the Scenographic Park of the ruins was established in Craco, which determined the securing of part of its buildings along a well-defined itinerary. However, the geological nature of the site together with the serious cracks of the buildings make the hypothesis of a complete recovery of the settlement unthinkable. Towards a valid proposal for conservation and enhancement of the village has been undertaken a cognitive process that, directed by Restoration, has tackled the study of the village, from the territorial to the urban and construction scale involving the disciplines of Surveying, Typological Characters of Architecture, Geology, Construction Technique, Estimates and Sociology. Several investigations have allowed to reconstruct the historical evolution of the village with its architectural relevance distributed along the visiting itinerary and the inaccessible ridge line, in order to understand its construction techniques, detect the state of conservation of the structures and surfaces and identify the real resources and opportunities of the territory. Results, obtained from the analyzes carried out, made it possible to formulate Guidelines, weighted between the two current antithetical visions: a positive one that considers practicable the recovery, at least partial, of the built environment through new forms of anthropization, and a more cautious one looking to a museum display for tourists. The design outcomes consist in: proposal of hydrogeological and landscape arrangement of slopes and rainwater regulation; enlargement and safety of the visiting itinerary; consolidation and preservation of the ruins only for scenographic purposes; restoration of a number of buildings aimed at their reuse for artistic, cultural, scientific and educational research activities.