I nuclei archeologici mediterranei come collettori dei segni del territorio. Il caso di Larissa in Tessaglia.

This paper presents the results of a design proposal developed for the city of Larissa, in Thessaly, on the occasion of an International Ideas Competition sponsored by UIA. The work we present starts from a basic assumption: that archaeological remains still constitute the “condensers” of historical signs on territorial scale. Signs capable of demonstrating that territory and city were originally part of the same system, and that they can therefore, once again, develop significant relationships. Starting from this belief, our proposal pursued a dual objective: on the one hand, re-centering the archaeological area with respect to the city, as an active part of urban life; on the other, at the same time, re-centre the city itself with respect to its territory, reactivating the relationships, now hidden, between the historical-archaeological nucleus and the valley of the Peneus river. Working simultaneously on both the urban and landscape scales, we have therefore tried to broaden the basic goals of the project, including the valorisation and the integration between city and territory. The result was a design aimed at reconnecting the archaeological nucleus with the rest of the urban body and with the river valley. In conclusion, the case study we present aims to demonstrate that the architectural project on archaeological areas can pursue “large-scale” objectives, thus becoming a driving force for projecting the urban landscape heritage within the territorial ecological networks, through a system of signs that activate the symbiosis of ancient cities with the original places of their foundation.