SCIENZA E BENI CULTURALI XXXII.2016
Alessia Zampini1 1 Alma Mater Studiorum, UniBo, Dipartimento di Architettura, alessia.zampini2@unibo.it
The Augustus’ Arch in Rimini was built in 27 BC, after the completion of the via Flaminia, in order to celebrate the pax Augustea and represented a monumental door of the city walls. During the 30’s, after that the Italian Chart of Restoration established the respect of the environmental conditions of monuments, the Municipality of Rimini started reflecting about the idea of isolating the Arch in order to celebrate the birth of the Roman emperor. Nevertheless the project moved from the need to clarify its primitive configuration, the results nourished the misunderstood image of a triumphal arch, an idea even more consolidated by the projects developed after the Second World War. After being mined by the German retreating troops in 1944 and being subjected to a subsequent strengthening, the arch became a focus for the Reconstruction plan and the following ones, which progressively excluded it from the dynamics of the contemporary city. Despite the eminent authors who worked on it, the arch ended to be isolated inside a roundabout. Starting from the analysis of the last century works, the story of the Augusto’s Arch in Rimini makes possible to understand how interventions with orthodox intentions, or considered irreproachable from the technical point of view, can reach misleading -or perhaps even heretic -results and it proves how important is to rule the different scale of the restoration project.
Key-words: Arch, Augustus, Rimini, isolation, restoration