La necropoli di via Celle a Pozzuoli tra conoscenza e restauro

The Necropolis of Via Celle is a funerary complex of Pozzuoli located at the beginning of the extra-urban section of the ancient via consularis Puteolis-Capuam. It is a group of fourteen buildings – mostly of columbaria built between the 1st and 2nd centuries. A.D. – with barrel vaults and walls with niches to contain the jars with the ashes of the dead. Rediscovered in the thirties of the Twentieth century, some tombs, studied by Roberto Pane and restored by Alfonso De Franciscis in the sixties, denounce in the architectural and decorative language not only the traces of the construction tradition of the eastern Mediterranean, which Pozzuoli, before Rome, introduced in the contemporary compositional syntax, but also important classical references of the Baroque architecture. The essay, also in the light of unpublished documentation, aims to systematize the current knowledge on the complex of via Celle, starting from the eighteenth-century iconography, to point the criteria and restoration techniques used over the years on the complex, in view of an enhancement that can counteract the state of semi-abandonment in which it currently finds itself.