Materia in analogia e contrasto. Due interventi di recupero nel complesso monumentale della Cattedrale di Sora

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Sora which was built on the remains of the Forum Aureum, presents a complex structure that includes parts of different ages due to its thousand-year old history. Among them, the two protruding volumes of the Chapel of Purgatory and the Aragonese Tower, which are located along the northern side, have been concerned by separate restoration interventions as part of the general refurbishment of the bishop's citadel. The first has interested the space below the Chapel of Purgatory which hosts new Episcopal Sepulchres, the second the ancient bastion with the insertion of a lift to ensure full accessibility to the entire complex. For both interventions the project chooses to entrust the reconfiguration of spaces, connected to different and new functional contents, to single-material matrices that are played on the codes of the Analogy and the Contrast with the ancient built. In the Episcopal Sepulchres the extensive use of the stone defines components - both superficial and volumetric - of a different scenography, according to criteria of chromatic and tactile assonance, and strategies of geometric antithesis to the generative rules of the ancient heritage. Parallelepiped graves and an altar are the components of this set-up which hides the only weathering steel element, a circular staircase. In the Tower, new connecting devices, laid down to stone walls or detached and raised from them, define a pronounced contrast with the masonry, entrusting the weathering steel with the choice of establishing an original and conscious relationship with the antique. New paths and an original access system, with steel doors, highlight the dialogue with the historical building: the lightness, the rust colour and the thinness are specific features that characterized these elements in order to solve the dialectic between the ancient and the new. The paper aims to demonstrate how the project premises have found a coherent technical-constructive translation in punctual, accurate and well-balanced interventions that in a discrete form have guaranteed new ways of use.