The Color Plan for the old town of Tarquinia: analysis of the actual situation and guidelines for a
critical-conservative restoration of the façades
The Color Plan of an ancient town center must be based, from the start, on a complex analysis of the
whole urban fabric, of the prevalent typologies and stylistic characters, and of the building materials
and techniques. The second step of this study is the observation and cataloguing of the remains of
the old coloring still preserved on the historic plaster. This final part of the research, that precede the
defining of the restoration project, is aimed at discover the “color history” of each building, not with
the intent of isolating it from the urban structure, but considering it a cell of the indivisible whole of
the historic center.
The critic evaluation of the results of the study must not bring to seek the imaginative
faces, dated back
to the distant past, neither of the single building nor of the street frontage. An ancient town center, such as Corneto, is a complex palimpsest of erected, modified, altered, embedded,
one inside the other, buildings. The flow of history, with the changes man-maid or caused by natural
events, shouldn’t be erased, otherwise we will pay dearly for the loss of the true value of a monument made
of houses and streets.
The planning choices of this project have been dictated by the willingness to respect the delicate balance
of history and esthetical values of the old town of Tarquinia, which is constantly threatened by disastrous
maintenance operations, with the aim of preserve that precious testimony of art, architecture and life, that
always arouse curiosity and admiration in those who walk its streets for the first time and is source of pride
for those who live there and feel it to be their own town.