ABSTRACT
The paper illustrates the results of the reconstruction site of the Mirandola Cathedral, which, among the buildings hit by the May 2012 earthquake, is one that suffered the most damage, becoming a representative case study of the overwhelming effects caused by the seismic action which stressed its structures so that a large part of the church collapsed.
The Cathedral, built in a late Gothic architectural style with a three-nave basilica floor plan and a system of pointed vaults, showed structural stress from the very beginning, as the vaults’ considerable weight strained the interior columns and exterior walls, which had to be reinforced with buttresses. The archival fonts document several crises to the bearing structures that led to major works being carried out by re-arrangement of its structural framework, already through the centuries, and when the 2012 seismic crisis hit the church, the lack of homogeneity triggered by all these interventions amplified the heterogeneity of the building’s constituent parts, causing significant collapses. The cross vaults of the nave and a portion of the roof behind the main façade collapsed, then the sidewalls of the clerestory resulted in an extensive collapse of the nave roof with severe damage to the side walls.
The restoration of the Cathedral addressed by the reconstruction of the whole vaulting system with lightweight materials suspended from the new roof structure stands as one of the first cases of post-earthquake reconstruction in Emilia that takes into account a new language that re-proposes ancient forms while fulfilling the safety and protection issues that the church may not have had over the last six centuries. Thus, the worksite resembles a complex restoration project that dealt with issues related to the seismic improvement of the severely devastated building and the reconstruction of large portions of its formal and figurative structure by creating a language from scratch for a story worth to be told.
