“New life for defence military architecture the case of the sighting towers in Basilicata”,

Since from the Roman Empire possession, it was felt the need to defend and to guard the territory from foreign incursions, especially in peripherical areas or coastal ones. For this reason, numerous towers were built. they form just a part of a larger communication system, in which each of them was in line with the next one with which communicated through a system "telegraph" or "semaphoric", through a complex system of bright reflections using fires, smoke or mirrors and sometimes even with a warning signal (bells). The research, which focuses on a portion of the Ionian Sea coastal area (Basilicata - Italy), through a study of the defensive system of sighting, it aims to highlight, beside the obvious functional system, the very close characteristics of shape, architectural and typological types, that connect these towers between them and assimilate them to the typical forms of military architecture (regular shapes, "closed" on the outside and massive). Through a technological and constructional analysis, the study aims to propose a "new life" for these architectures, that have lost their primary function and, now, were abandoned and in a evident state of decay, as a ruins. In fact, the fundamental elements of conservation debate consists in the opposition between the material and image conservation; the balance between these two terms is a third element, the “value” of the building. The most current guidelines suggest an "integrated conservation", as the combined result of the techniques interventions and user needs: the goal is to ensure "continuity of life" of this heritage through a "suitable use". It is also a necessary condition for the conservation intervention that exceeds the concept of protection to become an important way to build the future, as part of the social, economic and cultural territory in which that building are located.