THE SANCTUARY OF ST. FRANCIS IN PAOLA. METHODS, TOOLS AND PROCEDURES FOR INTERPRETATION, ANALYSIS AND REPRESENTATION OF THE ATRIUM AND FAÇADE

Abstract: The contribution that resulted from the recent survey of the Sanctuary of St. Francis in Paola is a part of a research project aimed at a unitary reading of the monument through an integrated system of multidisciplinary investigations. Today, the knowledge of an architectural work, thanks to quick and continuous evolution of technology, can’t be the product of individual analysis, but the result of a complex and organized system of information derivable from the contribution of different disciplines. This dialogue is essential and can provide significant contributions, if the specialists who are involved in it, try to get closer to the new possibilities of investigation which the technology available to today's, with its increasingly sophisticated instrumentation and, at the same time, the achieving understanding of historical-critical, technical and material of the building isn’t provided by the sum of individual disciplines contributions, but from integration between them and their mutual verification. The focus in this article will focus on the reorganization of the entrance of the religious complex occurred between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its remaking occurred until the last century, showing the results of some investigations (still in progress) is obtained from an integrated system of information (derived from archival research and instrumental investigations such as laser scanners, thermal imaging and GPR). The survey realized was brought on for two main reasons: first of all to trace, with the aid of accurate measurements, the real shape of the monument in order to point out more reliable interpretations of its formal (proportions, modularity, etc.) and structural characters (irregularity of the geometry, out of plumb, subsidence,…) and second of all to define a systematic approach of the digital representation process in order get in return graphical devices the most pertinent possible with the type of intended investigation, with the chance to promote, eventually, new hypothesis of interpretation on the monument.