Notes for a critical analysis of the historical stratifications in the Gallipoli Castle

The castle of Gallipoli is a mighty quadrangle equipped with a Rivellino. It was built to protect the ancient village and integral part of an urban-scale defense system consisting of a fortified ring of walls reinforced by massive bastions too. It is a complex architectural organism, result of innumerable stratifications difficult to be identified in their temporal sequence. Objective of this study is to reconstruct – on the base of new surveying- the main building steps, whose identification is possible through a critical- interpretative exercise that is by comparing some data as a result of a historical research with the stratigraphic reading of the elevated buildings.Countless architectural issues are to be solved with a view to restoration and to which we try to give a response by considering the identity of the monument and the environmental context which the monument belongs to.At the beginning of the cognitive process a systematic survey of the building was carried out with tools and techniques set up from time to time to achieve the intended objective. The topographic support base was in fact integrated: by the celerimetric survey of the outer walls and of the internal courtyard, by the direct survey of the individual inner rooms, by the laser scanner survey for the structure of the Rivellino in bad conditions, by the photo-modelling techniques by means of terrestrial and aerial drone shots for the restitution of wall and roof textures.Not easy the solution for Rivellino that was added by Francesco di Giorgio Martini at the end of the fifteenth century. He created a single fortified complex for a better defense of the Gallipoli port, later partly destroyed and so separated from the castle for new defense and security reasons. In recent times the Castle became seat of the customhouse and of the guard of finance, the Rivellino an open-air cinema. Nowadays both of them lost their functions. At the present time is it plausible to maintain the separation or to restore the lost unity by appealing to a creative solution? This is the question and - always of course considering the surviving formal elements - it could be proposed a return of the original unit.