The Mercato Coperto of Ravenna reuse Project, historical and cultural heritage of the city, aims to the functional requalification of the interior of the property, entrusted by Ravenna to Coop Adriatica, in respect of the historical and artistic features of the building.
The new Mercato Coperto will offer to the old town an innovative space dedicated to culinary excellence and culture, a place that can regenerate and recreate the urbancity center in respect of the historical structure of the building , an heritage to preserve, appreciate and relive, where the innovative fulcrum of aggregation and identity will be food, chosen among a wide selection of excellent local products.
The intervention project design, signed Arch. Paolo Lucchetta, provides the opening of a new entrance on Via Cavour "which helps to create an urban inside route in continuity with the Mercato" and a distribution of uses on two levels: on the ground Floor will found place an ice cream / chocolate shop, a Coop supermarket, a place dedicated to the craft beer production, dining facilities, Fresh Market, a Cooplibrary; on the first floor will be located space for cultural events and activities, a space cafe/ bookstore, an area for restaurants and a cooking school.
Today it is in progress the phase relative to the archaeological survey, that is propaedeutics to the final design and the structural intervention; the excavation surveys below the pavement share have unearthed the structural remains of buildings demolished at the beginning of the twentieth century to make way to the Mercato Coperto. It is archaeological structures related to a period from the Venetian dominion of the city (XV century) and the first years of the '900.
Extremely interestingis the discovery of large traits of Padenna tombamento coverage, an ancient river of Ravenna of which we have news since Roman times, whose tombatura probably dates from the late fifteenth century to the Venetian era, earlier found in Piazza Andrea Costa concurrently with the work on the project of underground drop Island, executed in 2009 by Hera SpA. The recovered structures are in progress of investigation with stratigraphical method under the scientific direction of the Superintendence Archaeology of the Emilia Romagna.
In these days the archaeologists are at work to understand and identify the chronological phases of frequentation of the area through the analysis of the ground layers, of the masonries, their foundations and of the share. The graphic documentation is effected through the photogrammetric method and the restitution of the topographical relief is georeferenced on the interactive digital paper of the province of Ravenna.
The photo-reliefs of the masonries and the recovered layers are realized, of time in time, corrected and georeferenced inside the encoded topographical base in the GIS. The photographic crawls are performed in a perpendicular way to the same distance in comparison to the plan of the objective.
Some aims are positioned in the vertexes of the area to document, creating square that will be the photographic releases. The points of the aims and the relative quotas are then acquire through the topographical (a total station) tool.
The images are then subsequently straighten and climbed on together in an ortophotomosaic through the use of softwares devoted for the geometric correction. The following and final phase is the sketch in scale of the planimetries, façade and sections.
The use of the Geographical Informative System is fundamental for easily interfacing the topographical data with the quantitative and qualitative information of the excavation area and to match or divide in different phases or levels (layer) spatial and planimetric data. These methodologies adopted on the site notably reduce the times of documentation in the yard returning a datum of high quality.
We are also proceeding with a first spot-dates offragmentsceramicspicked in the stratigraphies, important to date the frequentation and the type of referencecontext. Inside the filling layers of the area and the topping of the structures, there are in fact numerous small ceramics fragments: dishes and majolica jugs, enamel and decorated, basins of terracotta, glazed, painted and graffited, little olle and fire pots that testify the principal centuries of life of the XV and XVI century structure.
Currently the work are still in progress, the pursuance of the excavations and of some wise of close examination with the elaboration of the documentation will allow to acquire new historical and archaeological information of thisimportant area of Ravenna and to understand the phases of construction activity from the XIV century up to the beginning of the '900, particularly up to 1922, year of inauguration of the Covered Market.
[by Anna Claudia Cicognani, Elisabetta Pizzari, Francesco Maria Peron, Roberta Baldassari]
Explanation of the photos:
1. Coverage of the river Padenna of the XV century; partially collapsed. Seen by North.
2. Coverage of the river Padenna of the XV century. Seen by South. We clearly seen as the vault has been used as support for the construction of building and floor structures of following epochs.
3. Panning from the top of the excavation yard.
4. Line of imposing wall with direction North-south recovered in the trench E. This wall should probably belong to the more ancient building phase of the area. From the image the stratigraphy is clearly seen by the tall one to the lower part; the native bricks floor of the Mercato Coperto that it leans on the crest of the most ancient wall and on the right another wall of following phase with the relative foundation.
5. Long stretch of wall with course North-south with different constructive phases recovered in the trench B. We well notice the small transversal walls that divided the environments inside the buildings.
6. Particular of the trench B that well visualizes well the different building phases in the centuries of these structures.
7. Brick floor rests recovered in the trench B referable to one of the modern phases precedents to the construction of the Mercato Coperto.