Conoscere il passato nella contemporaneità-Riqualificazione della Fortezza di Scutari

Abstract

[EN] The 'Rozafa' fortress, the historical and symbolic centre of Shkodra, Albania, is the most important monument located on the hill at the ‘entrance’ of the city. The original old town is made of the different neighbourhoods around the fortress, with dwellings built on top of the ruins of the Illyrian, Roman-Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman walls. Being the image of the city and the physical evidence of the entire historical journey, the fortress thus becomes the subject of study and the site of the redevelopment project.The idea for this project of intervention comes precisely from the need to know more about the different historical and architectural aspects of the fortress. Having to deal with a long and very complicated route, there are many gaps in the knowledge of these aspects, and the information that can be extract from the existing fonts is not organised in the right way so that a clear panorama of all the events that took place in a precise chronological line can be obtained. The theme of the redevelopment project is therefore strongly linked to museology, a space where one can learn about the past in the contemporaneity through the display of historical documents, images and archaeological objects.As the present state of the fortress shows, its history over the centuries, like the rest of the Albanian fortresses, has been a troubled one. Between various bombardments and subsequent extensions, what remains today is only a small part of the fortress's heritage.