The preservation of the historical, archeological and artistic heritage of Orvieto: An interdisciplinary project

摘要

The Orvieto Hill, with its historical and cultural heritage, for its geotechnical peculiarities represents one of the most interesting and analyzed case study in the world, with more than 300 international scientific publications. The happening of the instabilities and the consequent intense activities of consolidation, transformed Orvieto to a one of a kind open sky laboratory for the study of the instability phenomena and for the study of the effects of the remediation works. The town of Orvieto, located 105 km north of Rome, was included in 1937 in the list of inhabited areas threatened or affected by landslides; starting from this date, a number of occasional state interventions took place to tackle the instability of the tuff cliff until Law 25 May 1978 No. 230 was adopted calling for “Urgent actions for the consolidation of the cliff of Orvieto and hill of Todi to safeguard the landscape and historical, archaeological and artistic heritage of the two towns”. The law authorized the Umbria Region to carry out studies and interventions on both Orvieto and Todi, historic towns presenting similar problems. The Orvieto Project, started at the end of the Seventies, is one of the first examples in Italy in which it has been adopted an interdisciplinary approach to the drafting of the plan in all its phases, from the study to the carrying out of the remediation works. For over thirty years the activities pushed involved professional from different areas of expertise (archaeology, chemistry, geotechnics, geophysics, hydraulics, transportation engineering, etc.) in a synergistic work.