Palermo: restoration and color, a theme to be reviewed
Dealing with the relationship between restoration and color of historic buildings, in the Sicilian capital,
has necessarily involved a rereading, albeit concise, of the city events that have affected Palermo. The
P.P.E., although has ceased its legal validity, however, it has marked the pace of the various activities
that have affected the historic center of Palermo, where, the adoption of a restorative methodology
prone to the research of a recipe to be placed at the foundation of a color plan, had, in many cases,
as inevitable result, the restoration of the ‘original’ colors, presenting Palermo no longer as historical
center, but revived, at the expense of a number of information and values that were previously easily
recognizable. If we accept the thesis that “color is one with the matter”, it focuses on one of the most
delicate issues in the field of treatments of architectural surfaces, and leads to a conscious acceptance
of how «Losing the existing colors ... is equivalent to losing the city and its architecturally history».
I therefore consider C. Brandi’s thought noteworthy when he claims to have the utmost respect for
“historical transitions”, which, precisely because they are historical and aesthetic, they guaranteed «a
harmonious, mutual harmony to the building and its environment». Therefore that recognition of
the «aesthetic value of decay and surface patina», sensibly captured by Paul Philippot first and later
by Donatella Fiorani, they offer further indications for a more in-depth and conscious revision of the
interventions on the coloring of the historic buildings of the Sicilian capital in the area of the critical-conservative restoration.
