In assenza di metodo: il restauro della Basilica di San Giovanni a Finale Ligure

The restoration of the façade of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Finale Ligure Marina is an example of how to cope with errors and incompetences, reversing a situation that began as a methodological failure, due to the absence in designers and restorers of education and conscious cultural approach at the heritage. It showed how much the lack of a method in restoration can affect awareness and knowledge. It showed also the heuristic power of archival knowledge and study of materials in archeology of architecture. The restoration, confronted with dilemmas related to authenticity and contemporary aesthetics, tells us how fundamental the knowledge of a correct method is: not as the expectation of a result, but as the path to reach it. This path remains unknown to many and is not sufficiently supported, not even by the offices of heritage protection. The overcoming of this state is possible with a rigorous education in restoration and including the idea fo “story” in our conservation methodology. Any restoration can be read as a story: the past that is no longer, but that was and still is, partially. A restoration is not a reconstruction of the past. The historical discourse remains an interpretation, not retrospective and not definitive. But the story gives the sense that what has happened is not fixed once and for all and allows a sensitive approach to topics that otherwise will remain unknown to experts as well as to other people.