Riflessioni sulla conservazione delle cortine murarie della cittadella fortificata di Berat, Albania

The discussion that is intended to be presented consists in a first result of the mission of the Polytechnic of Bari, Architecture, Construction and Design Department, Laboratory of History of Architecture, Archeology and Restoration, carried out on the Fortified Citadel of Berat in Albania as part of the project sponsored by the Italian Foreign Ministry: Albanian - Italian Scientific Cooperation Agreement for the Archaeological Study Program of Berat. The historical analysis of the fortified citadel of Berat can be examined through different phases, tracing its evolution over time characterized by a strong reuse of the same sites and above all of ancient stone materials. The oldest materials, partially ‘in place’, belongs to the Illyrian era, and are characterized by blocks of cyclopean dimensions, (mainly) in limestone, squared and placed with isodomic work. The fortress is strongly stratified starting from a first settlement in the 4th century. B.C. then heavily readapted yet in ancient times, until the Byzantine period with the emperors Theodosius II (5th century) and Justinian I (6th century). The different nature of the stone material, the strong reuse, the introduction of different types of mortar, allows for an extremely complex stratigraphic map which constitutes a thickening of the historical documentary value of the site itself. At the same time, the differences of materials and construction techniques and the conditions of partial ruin constitute an important source of acceleration of the forms of degradation which it is increasingly urgent to combat for the purposes of transmitting the document intact in its complex palimpsest. A specific attention must be paid to the mortars and especially to the plasters which due to neglect, or worse due to some previous conservative interventions, have almost completely disappeared and which instead bear witness to important phases of use of the complex fortified system.