An integrated conservation process, between history and hydraulics. The case of the ancient masonry "Tower of waters" in Colorno, Parma

The project of restoration of the ancient “Tower of waters” in Colorno, a small town near Parma, is an interesting opportunity to set up a strategy of “integrated conservation” (in the R. Di Stefano acception), starting from a deep environmental and historical analysis. This interesting masonry tower, built at the beginning of 1700 and now completely dismissed, is one of the last surviving ancient hydraulic structures used in the past to provide water for the magnificent waterworks of the near worldwide famous Ducal Palace (Reggia di Colorno), in that place called “Pianura Padana” where earth and water live side by side. The present paper aims at inspecting the role of an interdisciplinary approach in the knowledge and in the conservation of the built historical heritage. Studying this place, in fact, it has appeared immediately clear the strict relationship between the built heritage and the water all around it. Starting from these premises, the real challenge is to assure heritage preservation through environmental based strategies which may lead to even heavy investments in order to bring the building back to a new life and value, both cultural and economical. Water enters this ancient tower, being not only a scenographic instrument, in a perfect ducal tradition, but also a crucial economic resource for the maintenance of power on the territory. By investigating into the ancient hydraulic treatises, it’s possible to reconstruct the more reliable hypotheses of the ancient structural and functional organization of this tower, strongly modified during centuries, in which the presence of water and ancient equipments for its exploitation appears fundamental. Therefore, water's signs, suspended between scenography and management, have become the occasion for rethinking the development of this monument and its relations with territory, by investigating permanences and transformations, in a comparative reading of territorial episodes and archival documents which finds its conclusion in the design of a "museum of water" inside the tower. The fundamental role played by the water in the overall structural changes and damages of the tower walls and on the evolution in time of its crack pattern is examined in this paper, in connection with the peculiar building technique adopted and with the construction details typical of the towers on (and of) water. Moreover, the investigated hydraulic data, ancient and modern ones, and the topographic survey of the area, highlighted the potential related to the installation of a micro hydroelectric plant, which could represent the needed economic boost for the restoration of the building and its surroundings. Thus, the study presented herein, halfway between environmental analysis and historical research, aims to show the followed methodology in order to get a restoration strategy for a monument which doesn’t end in tower’s walls but that, through privileged "water's signs", aims to transfer complex relations between architectural and territorial organization into the structure.