Understanding and recovering identity. A comparison between Castelvecchio Calvisio and the refoundation of Marsica

This article focuses on the readability, understanding and conservation of the town’s identity, resulting from the coherence of the typological and figurative character of its architecture and minor buildings and its morphology, and compares the reality of Castelvecchio Calvisio with that of some of the towns of the Marsica area, damaged by earthquake in 1915. Amongst these latter, the small city of Avezzano also lies in the Province of L’Aquila: over the course of several decades it was transformed from a walled town surrounded by countryside and lake into a ‘provisional city’: a transformation due firstly to a decided mutation in the economy of the area and then to its destruction by an earthquake and subsequent reconstruction.