ANCONA – Passetto, the right part of the staircase reopens tomorrow: we at CentroPagina.it announced it a few days ago (click here). And finally our Trinità dei Monti, as it was renamed by the Mancinelli council, will see the light again. Soon, construction work on the left side will begin.
Inspection this morning (14 June), at 12.30, by the municipal councilor for public works, Stefano Tombolini, who arrived escorted by various technicians. After the completion of the cleaning, consolidation and protection works, the part right of the Passetto sea staircase. It was a complex job, completed in synergy with the company and the designers, based on the criteria of conservative and philological restoration.
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«Starting from the month of July – explains councilor Tombolini – the right part of the staircase will be built, with a total investment of 1.1 million euros. The staircase will be temporarily illuminated until the end of the works, thanks to the supply of poles for public lighting by Anconambiente. The redevelopment of staircase monumental del Passetto is one of the strategic objectives of the municipal administration, which respects the timetable established at the beginning of the year, which provided for the return of the right-hand staircase to citizens to descend by the beginning of summer 2024″.
The staircase, never maintained since the 1930s Twentieth century, represents a unique example of its kind. The works were necessary to remedy the phenomena of progressive degradation and to implement interventions to strengthen and replace degraded components.
The analysis of the data collected preliminarily through a series of scientific techniques has shown that there are no significant problems nature static, as the wall structures are solid and well built. The most significant manifestations of degradation concern the deterioration of the stone materials which, constantly exposed to the action of atmospheric agents, even of considerable intensity, have in many cases lost their consistency, appearing eroded, to the point of sometimes causing real gaps within the wall fabric.
«Due to size and intended use – we read in the relation general of the executive project – the stairway to the sea, more than a monument, is configured as a true monumental work, an impressive engineering work, both celebratory and functional, which bears the signature of the same architect Guido Cirilli, designer of the nearby War Memorial, which marks the starting point of the descent to the sea for those coming from the city. Faced with such a peculiar theme, the redevelopment project could only start from an in-depth knowledge of the site, of the work itself and of its relationships with the context”.
The intervention is based on the criteria of conservative and philological restoration and is entirely carried out with manual means. This obviously also affects the duration implementation times, working methods and choice of materials. The restoration takes into account the criterion of the minimum necessary intervention and involves the use of traditional execution techniques and materials compatible with existing ones, widely used and tested in architectural and historical-artistic restoration.
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The project is based on a phase preliminary dimensional and photographic survey, for which we made use of the collaboration of personnel expert in the use of modern technologies, such as the drone and the laser scanner, which allowed us to obtain a mapping as complete as possible with dimensional and photogrammetric characteristics.
Regarding the choice of stone materials and binders used for the construction of the staircase, some of which showed evident erosion and degradation phenomena, a study was conducted, together with the Superintendence, to understand the physical-chemical characteristics of the materials present and to identify, consequently, the materials to be used for any additions. The analyzes revealed that the analyzed samples are identifiable as carbonate rocks, very compatible with the white stone coming from the Cesane quarry in the province of Pesaro-Urbino.
There description of the interventions
The interventions to be carried out have been divided into three groups, corresponding to the three phases of a conservative intervention: cleaning, which includes the removal of upper vegetation, patinas, graffiti and all those elements that are not part of the original architecture; consolidation, which involves for example the integration of missing parts and interventions on joints; protection, aimed at maintaining the state of cleanliness achieved and preventing the formation of new degradation phenomena over time.
«As already highlighted – say the Municipality – all the interventions are carried out with manual techniques, which reduce invasiveness to a minimum. For example, consolidation is carried out by resurfacing solid masonry with material similar to the existing one, made with the same manufacturing technique, bonded with hydraulic lime mortar with low clay content
