Diagnostic plan on the Monastery of St. Mary of the Virgins in Cosenza (Italy)

The process of restoration provides an important preliminary step, very complex and articulate, aimed, to collect all the information necessary to make design decisions more effective and relevant to the individual case. This preliminary step consists in the drafting of so-called diagnostic plan, which forms the basis of the restoration project. This paper deals the preparation of a diagnostic plan for the future restoration project, that should be addressed for the Monastery of St. Mary of the Virgins in Cosenza, one of the most important of Calabria region, thanks to the particular beauty of its cloister. Over time, the cloister has suffered various kinds of degradations, which are slowly causing the loss of its aesthetic features, as well as structural instability problems. The diagnostic plan performed has had the aim to contextualize first the architecture examined from a territorial and historical point of view, as well as perform accurate architectural analyzes based on the architectural survey. Next, the state of conservation of the religious structure regarding the building materials it was investigated, highlighting potential forms of degradations, through specific microscopic analyzes SEM/EDX, and allowing to hypothesize related causes. Lastly have been put forward careful considerations about the static functionality of the cloister's columns.