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