L’anamnesi dei restauri come strumento di conoscenza. Il caso emblematico della Cattedrale di Troia Restoration anamnesis as a knowledge tool. The emblematic case of Troia Cathedral

The constructive reading of the historical architecture through the in-depth analysis of the published and unpublished sources preserved in the archives, interwoven with all the due investigations on its physical consistency, can represent a unique and precious cognitive tool to acquire all that corpus of fundamental information that constitutes the basis of an aware restoration intervention. The possibility of consulting and using the archival documents and the historical data contained therein, according to a different narrative use, is the guarantee of a deeper knowledge and anamnesis of the Monument and its course through history, as it is based on certain, objective historical data and, as such, not subject to arbitrary interpretations or disputes. The overall reading key is eminently historical; in 2003 Paul Ricoeur wrote that history is writing from one side to the other, as the data to be read unfolds from archives to historical texts, written and published, in a perspective in which the analysis of documentary memories can only generate, in perspective, a further demand for knowledge. This contribution is the metaphor of an itinerary through time and dusty documents that reveals the historical truth of one of the most important Monuments in Southern Italy, the Troia Cathedral (FG); narrating the interventions that have changed its architectural consistency, in order to arrive at that cognitive basis, the so-called anamnesis, which addresses future conservation interventions in a critical and conscious way.