Sustainable Interventions: Conservation of Old Timber Roof of Michelangelo’s Cloister in Diocletian’s Baths

In this study, a rigorous assessment approach is proposed in order to promote conservation of cultural heritage instead of partial replacement too often overused in the past. With reference to the XVI–XVII cloisters in the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, in the small cloister, known as Ludovisi’s, the old chestnut timber structure was dismantled and substituted with a new roof made of glued and laminated timber rafters and purlins. In the past 20 years, some of the bays of Michelangelo’s cloister have also undertaken substitution of the roof structure, with new timber elements of chestnut wood. In order to satisfy a comprehensive reliability assessment of the roof structure, as required by the management of the monument, the authors carried out non-destructive measures, experimental full-scale tests, as well as a refined finite element modeling, aiming at the conservation of the historical value of the timber structure.