Francesco Canali1, Alfredo Cigada2, Carolina Lucaccioni1, and Lucia Toniolo2
1) Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano
Via Carlo Maria Martini, 1 – 20122 – Milano
francesco.canali@canaliassociati.it, carolina.lucaccioni@duomomilano.it
2) Politecnico di Milano
Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano (Italy)
{alfredo.cigada, lucia.toniolo}@polimi.it
Keywords: Cathedral of Milan, Acoustic stress, Stained glasses, Stone decay and treatment.
Abstract. The institution named Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo (Fabbrica) was established in 1387 with the goal of having in charge all operational aspects related to the Cathedral of Milan (i.e., design, construction, financing and maintenance). From the building ending (XIXth century), the Fabbrica is today still involved in the continuous restoration and maintenance of the Cathedral, due to specific characteristics of the main construction material such as Candoglia marble. On one hand, the Fabbrica itself still behave as a kind of gothic relic: still structured as it used to be centuries ago, with craftsmanship, heavy duty team work, astonishing manual skills, excellence in specific and unusual tasks. On the other hand, the Fabbrica is gone through centuries hand in hand with the technological and scientific progress that the Politecnico di Milano embodied so well.
The traditional collaboration between Fabbrica and Politecnico di Milano recently received a significant impulse through a wide and multi-disciplinary research agreement, signed in order to solve all the special issues met in the continuous restoration of the building, as well as to enhance the knowledge and the condition-based maintenance of the Cathedral using the 3rd millennium technologies. Matching needs, aims and resources: a terrific challenge, with still a long way to go. The different activities of the research program involve every aspect of the Cathedral preservation: from evaluations of the masonry fabric to geometrical survey, until design of a specific and customized monitoring net. Many of them will be treated in specific speeches: here follows a quick glimpse to those not tightly linked with masonry structural aspects but really relevant and developed in last two years, like acoustic stress on historical stained glasses, caused by concerts, and conservation treatments on decaying marble surfaces.