The masonry bridges in Southern Italy: vestige to be preserved

After the fall of the Roman Empire and the consequent breaking up of the territory into small free states, the need to build roads had an abrupt stoppage and many suburban bridges were abandoned too. The inquiry area is the Sannio, in which coexist many examples of: 1) ancient bridges still on use; 2) bridges of Samnite’ Age, adapted in the later centuries, nowadays in a marginal rule with respect to the roads net; 3) bridges cut off from the road system. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some of them in order to propose a cataloguing methodology of structural, technologic and material aspects of masonry bridges. The planned methodology last purpose is to preserve an adequate witness of this heritage and to lay the foundations to their safeguarding if, in the future, the sensibility towards these constructions would not depend only on their utilization.