Documenting the disappeared Rome: the San Marco district

The research concerns a lost part of Rome: the San Marco district, along the slopes of the Capitol. The evolution of the inhabited area began in the Middle Ages, based on an archaeological substratum of Roman era, and continued to develop until the end of the nineteenth century, when they began demolition of the historical fabric. This breaks the urban continuity, switching from a dense housing fabric, varied in building types, to one of ceremonial and celebratory spaces. This research studies the historical formative and typological process, and the redefinition of the urban fabric using the philological restoration methodology extended both to the whole pattern and to the single building. The reconstruction of the district before the demolitions uses 1871 as the time limit, corresponding to the update of the Urban Gregorian Land Registry. The information base consists of documentary data, such as archival, iconographic and photographic sources, associated with the typological reading of the fabric. This provides a reconstruction of the urban consistency through the critical analysis of sources. The restitution of the urban fronts and of the building facades arises as a necessary outcome: this work of interpretation and redrawing translates into a re-design process.