BRIDGING HISTORY AND SCIENCE IN THE PRESERVATION PROCESS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE: THE SAN PIETRO MARTIRE CHURCH CASE STUDY

The paper explores the non-destructive experimental conservation assessment of the Church of San Pietro Martire in Verona, a key example of Veronese Gothic architecture. Also known as San Giorgetto, the church is famous for its significant 15th-century interior fresco cycles, including Giovanni Maria Falconetto's "The Hunt of the Unicorn". Built between 1282 and 1350 near the Basilica of Sant'Anastasia and the Scaliger Tombs and originally part of the convent, the Dominican order ceded it to the Knights of Brandenburg in 1450. Secularized in the early 19th century, the church fell into disuse, despite the associated Scaliger Tombs shaped Verona's Gothic imagery, influencing 19th-century international thinkers such as John Ruskin. The study adopts an innovative multidisciplinary approach based on data digitalization to evaluate the conservation status of the church. Led by the Università Iuav di Venezia, in collaboration with the local office of the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Verona, it combines laser-scanning surveying and experimental analyses, as well as structural modelling, with historical research to provide a sound methodology for the analysis of unused religious heritage. The methodological foundation of the research was the correlation of historical and iconographic data with the scientific results emerging from the in-situ campaigns for a comprehensive evaluation in order to build a digital semantic model that can respond to the cause-effect relationships and identify critical issues to design a plan of maintenance and preservation of the church.