St. Agata’s site conservation planning: documenting and surveying

The statement “understanding heritage to preserve it” underlines the need for deep-in, methodologically reliable, documenting and comprehension of heritage features, values, and vulnerabilities, such that consequently its preservation planning is appropriately addressed. Though summarised, here the main outfits are illustrated of such an “understanding project” about St. Agata’s settlement, which has been in abandon for about sixty years and now is extensively in ruins. For the first time, it has been at last surveyed and archaeologically investigated. Starting with the site Laser-Total-Station survey [1], complemented by detailed manual surveys (diagonal check) too, the building stratigraphy phasing, together with the masonry-laying and timber structuring analysis, have been crossreferenced with historical data. This assessment informed the understanding of the fabric development throughout history up to the actual remains, such as registered through the as-found condition surveying.