The Roman amphitheater in Durres: the survey as a means of multidisciplinary knowledge for urban regeneration, architectural recovery and archaeological excavation

In 2003, he kicked off the "Project Durrës", conducted by the University of Parma and UNOPS-PASARP Pilot Project for the "Design and realization of Urban Archaeological Park of Durrës (Albania)." From this first project, has shown the need to integrate knowledge not only on the archaeological site of the main monument of the city, the Roman amphitheater, but also on its architectural part, as well as its architectural and functional recovery, and on the enhancement within a wider process of urban renewal. Under the first proposal for intervention and new functions for the safety of the Roman amphitheater of Durres was carried out by surveyors, structural engineers and archaeologists from the University of Parma, a first phase of analysis of the site and its urban context. As a result of this agreement, in 2005, was co-financed by MIUR an International project, coordinated by Paolo Giandebiaggi for the Survey of the amphitheater of Durres: knowledge of a monument to the world's cultural heritage. The mission was carried out for the performance of different types of survey: archaeological, architectural, and urban, with several integrated methods of detection as a first important step of knowledge for the diagnosis and the preparation of projects of restoration and reuse of the amphitheater. In the last few missions were surveyed by integrated methodologies finds from excavations, carried out by archaeologists, and it turned to be noted in more detail architectural elements of the amphitheater. The study about the amphitheater and its context allowed to make numerous scientific collaborations between institutions and compartecipazion of students of archeology, architecture and engineering of the University of Parma and the Polytechnic of Tirana. The strength of these type of cognitive analysis, is definitely in the multidisciplinary approach that has allowed the coaching skills very different by archaeologists for the part relating to the excavations; by the architects for the part relating to the survey of the high part and the different indoor environments, to understand this complex "machine", to the proposal of adequate solutions to new functions ; by geologists for the geological surveys; by engineers for the study and evaluation of the static aspects and to identify the best solutions for the main problems of stability; by planners who worked on the new master plan for the city of Durres. Numerous also was the specific expertise of different fields of archeology: scholars of the mosaics bizantin; specialists in the study of the frescoes and the chemical analysis of the materials and their state of conservation, and many others. To achieve satisfactory results in complex environments such as that expressed the amphitheater of Durres and its urban plan, it is essential to be able to act in a synergistic way, combining different skills, different approaches to the same problem or different aspects of the same, ways that are sometimes deeply conflicting but only through a constructive synthesis can lead to more complete and congruent with the ideas that the same object of analysis suggests.