Fortezze sacre: conservazione e valorizzazione

The Mediterranean, as is well known, consists of numerous fortified architectures considered to be testimonies of considerable interest by scholars of military heritage, often subject to destruction, reconstruction and abandonment over the centuries. In this scenario, a little-explored issue concerns the combination of military and religious architecture which, over time, led to the creation of real sacred fortifications. Disparate territorial ambits, in the Old and New Worlds and in the East and West, are characterized by the presence of fortified monuments of sacred interest whose construction can be traced back to the rapid advance of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century into the Christian territories with which came the fall of Constantinople and the decline of the Byzantine Empire. Consequently, between the XV and XVI centuries various monasteries in Greece, and in the Balkans in general, were fortified by building walls or by moving the seat of the places of cult to territory that was difficult to access from outside. Emblematic examples of such architectural structures are characterized by the Meteora Monasteries in Greece and the Macedonian Meteors in northern Macedonia, built high above rocky promontories. Inserting itself in this context, the contribution proposes a theoretical and graphic analysis of some architectural exempla through the discipline of restoration, with the aim of documenting the geological context of reference and the material consistency and current state of conservation of some architectural exempla. The purpose of the investigation is intended to be the development of guidelines resolving the critical issues found, which are mainly attributable to the accessibility of these areas for tourism purposes.