Between 2022 and 2023, the façade of Genoa's cathedral, San Lorenzo, underwent a long and demanding restoration.The front of the church, an exceptional and rare example of transalpine Gothic architecture in Italy, in which the three large portals realised within the first thirty years of the 13th century stand out, is an absolute unicum in the history of European sacred architecture, both for its forms and for the quality of the materials used, which give the whole an absolutely special polychromatic connotation.
Directed by architect Claudio Montagni, the intervention was also an extraordinary opportunity to investigate the construction aspects and the history of the façade, in dialogue with the University of Genoa in the persons of Clario Di Fabio and Francesca Girelli.
The conference, to be held on 28 May, is organised with the scientific collaboration of AssIRCCo (Italian Association for the Recovery and Consolidation of Constructions) and has the primary objective of presenting the technical and cognitive results of this restoration, and at the same time to examine the case of the façade of Genoa Cathedral, which is truly emblematic. All this in dialogue with other scholars, who will deepen the comparison with coeval buildings that were the fruit of the same fertile season of architectural history in Italy: that of the transplantation of French Gothic between the North and South of the Peninsula from the 1310s to 1250, the year of the death of Emperor Frederick II.
The detailed programme of the conference is available in the annex.