Diffusion of a technological model along the Adige path: the composite beams.

This research starts from some consideration about the wooden composite beams used to underpin the floors of the wide halls of the mansions in the Dukedom of Ferrara between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. These kinds of structures are localized also in Trento, Verona, and Mantua which, like Ferrara, was used to employ Tyrolean wood for their construction yards. The aims of this study are to map the spread of the composite beams in these first three cities, describe the local differences, and try to understand how and through which routes the knowledge about this particular carpentry have been diffused on a wide area. After an extensive gathering of examples in the three cities, a first analysis show that Ferrara maybe wasn’t the first to used the composite beams, even if, surely, have reached a high level of perfection in their realizations.