Da fortezza a residenza castellana: osservazioni stratigrafiche per la comprensione del processo trasformativo della Rocca di Novellara (RE, Italia) = From a fortress to a residential castle: a stratigraphic reading of the transformations in the Rocca of Novellara (RE, Italy)

The paper reports the results of a stratigraphic reading on the northern façade of the Rocca di Novellara (Reggio Emilia, Italy), a castle which is now the town hall, right in the city centre. Though as a pole of the contemporary public life in Novellara, housing at present both a museum and a nineteenth century theatre, the Rocca recalls its military past through its name and by means of the still standing remains of the walls and corner towers. Besides a well-documented historical development, the stratigraphic inves-tigation of the northern façade –the only part that still hasn’t been restored– allowed a direct observation of the material traces revealing the slow transformation of the Rocca from a fortification to a residential castle. This study gave the chance of understanding the different constructive phases of the castle, mak-ing a chronological sequence out of them but it was also meant to reflect about the changes of its char-acter, as the building has been acquiring a complex identity through time, due both to high qualified ar-chitectural episodes and to as much meaningful though tiny changes. Thus, the permanence of the strati-fied marks can be regarded as one of the main goals of a preservation project