THE DIALECTICS BETWEEN THE PRESERVATIONAND USE OF

SACRED HYPOGEAN ENVIRONMENTS

Daniela Concas

‘Sapienza’UniversityofRome-FacultyofArchitecture

daniela.concas@uniroma1.itedanielaconcas@libero.it

ABSTRACT

Nowadays the dialectics between the preservation and use of hypogean environments still represents a

central problem, since the requests of accessibility and of cultural and cult-like enjoyment of these

environmentsinevitablybringtotheoutbreakofpreservationproblems.

Based on the examination of the actual state of some Roman sacred hypogean environments, the following

topics,linkedtotheiruse,willbeillustrated:accessconditions,tourroute,lightingandsafetyconnections.

One serious problem concerns the unrelatedness of today technological systems to the primitive purposes of

these environments. Subsequetly, some other problems that are common to all the categories of different

systems have been identified, thus raising serious issues regarding the preservation of the historic, both

structural anddecorative, ‘subject’. Indeed,besides thenative architectural space, thepassages ofornamental

narrativeandsymbolicartmustbeprotectedandgreatlyenhanced.

To continue, the causes of native material alteration and decay result to be linked to four matters: the

variation of the original indoor environmental conditions, the lighting that contributes to worsen the previous

problem, the insertion of electric cables necessary to the technological systems, and the visitors’ entrance

thatmodifiesthermo-hygrometricparametersandincreasesdustandpollutingsubstances.

Such an analysis allows to get a ‘reasoned’ picture of the actual condition of the hypogean sites and it is an

essentialstartingpointfortheoretical-methodological remarks,furthercasesandnewquestions.

Key-words: sacredhypogeanenvironments,preservation,use,technologicalsystems,Rome