‘La Mensa’, lettura degli aspetti costruttivi per l’interpretazione della fabbrica

The construction characteristics of ancient buildings frequently offer important information for the reconstruction of their history, in relation to the context of local building traditions: the historical traces imprinted on architectural structures are often more numerous than archival and historiographical information and allow us to learn about events that we might not otherwise know. To understand the process of construction and transformation of Villa Mensa, building techniques, materials used, surviving traces and degradation phenomena were carefully observed. In particular, in this paper our attention is focused on the characteristics of foundation structures (with reference to the local building tradition), texture of brick masonry with many interesting marks of the temporal evolution, load-bearing and light-structured vaults, wooden floors, roofs that are pitched next to each other as the building is expanded, and ancient stairs.