“Reconstruction as a creative act”: on anastylosis and restoration around the Venice Congress

The contradictions inherent in the reconstruction of archaeological sites have never been summed up as concisely as in Elizabeth Spelman’s definition of repair: “the creative destruction of brokenness” (Spelman, 2002: 134). As Nicholas Stanley-Price puts it as a first principle in his paper on reconstruction of ruins, “a reconstructed building –if based on primarily excavated evidence– must be considered a new building” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 41). Quite a radical statement, followed by five other principles attempting to frame the limits of such reconstructions, in an attempt to fill the void left by the most influential doctrinal documents on the subject. The article is very revealing in this respect: despite the rigid position of the Venice Charter and later, of the Operational Guidelines for the World Heritage Convention with regard to reconstructions, their number continued to grow, by virtue of arguments and despite criticisms that are quite rightly inventoried. And maybe because such documents reject reconstructions –which represent in many respects, as Stanley-Price underlines, “an extreme example of restoration”–, “there are no textbook rules about when restoration should be carried out or how far it should go” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 32).

What struck me when I first read this paper is that such a distinguished archaeologist could declare that “in short, reconstructions are new buildings; they do not reproduce original conditions” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 42) without expressing criticism nor regret. It ran counter to my preconceived notions about an assumed opposition between architects and archaeologists when it comes to reconstruction and restoration. Reading the article devoted by StanleyPrice and Jokilehto to the work of Franco Minissi in the 1950’s and 1960’s on the sites of Gela, Piazza Armerina and Heraclea Minoa in Sicily (Stanley-Price and Jokilehto, 2001) that I soon discovered in the course of my research further persuaded me that I was wrong. It was simplistic, to say the least, to believe that in matters of reconstruction or restoration, only the architect was open to creation where the archaeologist showed a visceral attachment to the untouched remains.

But really, where did this preconceived idea come from? On reflection, it came more from my experience as a teacher in a faculty of architecture than from my research in the history of conservation-restoration. Where my colleagues and students had a certain mistrust of archaeologists who were supposed to limit their creative potential, their predecessors seemed to have agreed more easily for the benefit of the conservation and presentation of archaeological remains, even if this collaboration did not result in the drafting of clear principles but rather in an apparent opposition between theory and practice, as Stanley-Price rightly observed.

His observations, and the questions that the article had raised for me about the supposed specificities of the positions of architects and archaeologists towards reconstruction, made me want to go back to my files relating to the Venice Congress and its charter, to reread them in light of these questions that had not previously caught my attention (I mainly focused on the question of historic cities). Was the issue of reconstruction of archaeological remains discussed at the congress? And if so, had it been addressed by architects or archaeologists? How had article 15 of the charter been drafted and what was the experience of the authors of the document in this area? And in the years that followed, had the article been quickly criticized, like others, and subject to revision?

The congress and its sections

Organized by the General Directorate of Antiquities and Fine Arts of the Ministry of Public Education, the Second International Congress of Restoration brought together, from May 25 to 31, 1964, about 500 participants at the Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Parallel to the congress, an exhibition at Palazzo Grassi presented, from May 25 to June 25, more than 500 projects from 35 countries. According to the list of participants, 506 professionals attended the congress. Among the two-thirds of these whose profile can be identified, architects were in the vast majority (243), followed far behind by art historians (53). Archaeologists represented less than 10% of the participants (35 could be identified) (Comitato nazionale italiano dell’ICOMOS, 1971: XXXVII-LIII). But this did not prevent the questions of conservation and presentation of archaeological remains from being discussed.

Devoted to the general theme of “the restoration of monuments in modern life”, the works of the congress were divided into five sections, dealing with both theoretical and practical issues, at the scale of the monument or the urban fabric, and according to various disciplinary approaches. The treatment of archaeological remains was mostly addressed by the two first sections, respectively dedicated to “the theory of conservation and restoration and its applications”, chaired by the Mexican architect Carlos Flores Marini, and “fundamental problems of study, research and restoration of monuments”, “excavations and conservation methods for archaeological elements” and “life of monuments”, chaired by the French Chief architect Albert Chauvel. How was reconstruction envisaged, and what arguments were put forward for or against it?

In fact, looking at the Venice Congress’s proceedings through the lens of Stanley-Price’s paper reveals that most arguments in favor and against reconstruction that he enumerates were already addressed in the presentations. Similarly, it seemed clear to the members of the congress, as to Stanley-Price, that the reconstruction of archaeological sites was not in principle the same as postwar reconstruction. Even if it was observed that these specific reconstructions may have led to a “suspension of established norms”[1] (Pane, 1971: 11), important actors of postwar reconstruction such as the architect Jan Zachwatowicz, professor at the University of Warsaw and co-director of the Reconstruction Bureau of the city after 1945, were opposed to excessive restoration outside the post-war context and considered that “if it is a question of the didactic value of the monument in question, one way or another of making visitors aware of the original form of the monument can be found, if only by means of a drawing or a model” (Zachwatowicz, 1971: 51). Although cultural tourism was still underdeveloped compared to the current situation, the temptation to rebuild excessively to meet the needs of visitors was addressed by a few speakers, starting with Roberto Pane who, in his opening lecture, openly regretted the concessions made to mass culture: “there is a definite relationship between the watered-down stupidities of television broadcasts and the way in which tourist caravans are guided towards contemplating monuments. Indeed, just as mental efforts are avoided for those who watch television, so physical effort is avoided for those who visit the monuments.”[2] This was not without consequences in terms of conservation:

The monument is no longer a historical individuality to be protected as such, but a pure and simple object of consumption and, consequently, the very way in which it is conserved is strictly subordinate to this vocation. This can thus end up influencing modern conservation criteria in the wrong direction, because aesthetic and historical considerations are no longer the sine qua non condition of the restoration work, and extensive and undesirable reconstructions are often carried out so that there is “more to see” than mere ruins and so that the object corresponds as closely as possible to its price[3] (Pane, 1971: 11).

Among the bad examples, Pane cited explicitly “the numerous reconstructions and misunderstood restorations that have been carried out for a long time in Greece and elsewhere especially on the initiative of the United States”, such as the “cold and spectral resurrection of the stoa of Attalos which rises, new and intact in the middle of the ruins of the Athenian Agora”[4] (Pane, 1971: 11). Thus, he engaged in a heated debate with the Chief Historian of the National Park Service, Charles W. Porter, who presented, in the first section, a report on restoration and reconstruction works carried on in the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. On this site, although reconstruction was presented as “the exception rather than the rule”, there were notable exceptions such as “the ‘reconstruction’ of New Hall, of which one wall remained, as a memorial to the first beginnings of the Marine Corps and the reconstruction, with modern adaptations, of Library Hall to meet the needs of the American Philosophical Society for book space”. The latter case was “defended on practical and aesthetic grounds”, because it enhanced “the setting of other buildings” (Porter, 1971: 69-70). A press release of the Cini Foundation, dated 26 May 1964 and quoted by Andrea Pane relates the course of the debates:

Professor Charles W. Porter […] illustrated the North American conception, stating that today’s society likes the integral reconstruction of disappeared monuments, in order to gain spiritual enjoyment and education, stressing the formative value of reconstruction. Professor Pane replied that it is unacceptable to extend the “American taste” to other countries, admitting that if a society of recent cultural traditions such as the United States wants to rebuild monuments that do not exist, have disappeared or have been falsely set, it can do so by renouncing the claim to create monuments. The assembly expressed with prolonged applause its unanimous consent to the Italian scholar’s thesis[5] (Pane, 2009: 316, note 41).

As this excerpt suggests, Porter was rather isolated in his defense of such practices, although some speakers were of the opinion that the ruins could and must, contrary to what was previously expressed by the traditional expression “dead monuments” –which would disappear in the Venice Charter– “serve a useful purpose and social culture”[6] (Zachwatowicz, 1971: 49). But even those who considered a partial reconstruction acceptable, and even desirable for tourism purposes, like the architect Ivan Zdravkovic in the case of ruined Serbian medieval fortresses (Zdravkovic, 1971: 410), insisted on the fact that “in all cases where the data collected are not sufficient, plans should not be drawn up for reconstruction, but for restoration and, in some cases, even for simple conservation. It is better to leave the fortresses as they are, only partially preserved, than to restore them improperly, without sufficient data and in haste”[7] (Zdravkovic, 1971: 413). In any case, as the British archaeologist Roy Gilyard-Beer stated in his introductory lecture to the second section, the evidence produced by excavations should be “used with caution, for reconstruction on these grounds, considered purely as evidence for posterity, has the same limitations as the published report on a site destroyed in the course of excavation, and like the report it reflects the talent and capacity of the excavator and the techniques at his command at a fixed point in time” (Gilyard-Beer, 1971: 159).

The possibility of reconstructing ruins was therefore not entirely rejected by the speakers at the congress, but subject to strict conditions. In this respect, the nuances between “consolidation works” and “integration works” were addressed by the archaeologist Pietro Romanelli, integration being only appropriate “when it comes to restoring fallen parts that even in the fall have retained the original layout, to recompose the appearance of the monument to make it more comprehensible, to prevent the fallen elements from being destroyed or dispersed”[8] (Romanelli, 1971: 164). Furthermore, restoration works should be subject to two conditions: “that there are safe and sufficient elements for integration, so as to avoid any arbitrariness or even any merely hypothetical completion”, and “that the integrated parts are clearly and permanently distinct from the old parts.”[9] He went on to list ways of distinguishing the new from the old, close to those developed almost a century earlier by Camillo Boito, and insisted on the fact that “in any case, the juxtaposition of materials in strong contrast with the ancients in terms of quality or color or the use of construction systems that could generate confusion with systems used in antiquity should be avoided”[10] (Romanelli, 1971: 164-165).

Does the study of the various contributions reveal a clear difference in position between architects and archaeologists? Not really, although Jean Lauffray, trained as an architect, but archaeologist by experience, dedicated his paper to the reasons for the frequent disagreements between both professionals (Lauffray, 1971: 167). According to him, such disagreements originated from their very different training, recruitment and professional status. During the 1957 congress in Paris, a similar observation had led the fifth section, dedicated to the relations of monuments architects and archaeologists, to express the wish that all countries would “set up specialization courses where future architects of historic monuments and archaeologists will study together the history of architecture and the procedures to be employed for the conservation of monuments”, with the aim to “contribute to the creation of a team spirit between specialists in these two disciplines”[11] (Congrès international, 1960: 37). The chair of the section, Anastasios Orlandos, director of the Antiquities of Greece and himself both a civil engineer and an archaeologist, had stressed that the disagreements in case of anastylosis could be “on the materials to be used to complete the missing parts of the building to be restored” and “on the degree to which anastylosis can or should be pushed”[12] (Orlandos, 1960: 303). To illustrate the fact that a project could suffer from errors coming from either side, he took the examples of the Parthenon and the Stoa of Attalos. In the first case, the discoloration of the artificial stone chosen by Balanos to complete the columns without consulting archaeologists had led to a “very striking and unsightly” contrast, while in the second case, the decision made by the archaeologists to keep the original elements on the ground “so that they could be more easily studied”, had led the monument to be of a “brilliant whiteness” causing an “unpleasant impression”[13] (Orlandos, 1960: 303-304).

Returning to the observations made by Lauffray at the 1964 congress, he noted, among the points of contention between archaeologists and architects, that in the eyes of archaeologists, “if he restores, the architect is too preoccupied with appearance and presentation to the detriment of archaeological truth. He sacrifices the authenticity of the details that bother him [...] [and] considers the monument more as a work of art than as a scientific document”[14] (Lauffray, 1971: 167). The French archaeologist Ernest Will had the same opinion in 1957: addressing restoration and presentation, he observed that architects were “too tempted to resuscitate the monuments of the past, also attached to the artistic side of the problem”, while archaeologists were “concerned with exact science and sometimes a little timid”. In Will’s view, “only the knowledge of one and the technical knowledge of the other can ensure suitable solutions”[15] (Will, 1960: 311). These excerpts seemed to support my own a priori. But they did not stand up well to the scrutiny of the presentations at the Venice Congress.

In fact, the issues of consolidation and integration were indeed examined differently depending on whether the ruin was considered a historical document or a work of art. But this didn’t at all depend on the speaker’s training, as illustrated by the different points of views of Ferdinando Rossi and Roberto Pane, respectively engineer-architect and architect, on the issue of consolidation and integration of ruins. According to Pane, ruined monuments should not only be considered as historical testimonies, but also, from the point of view of the “aesthetic instance”:

It must be remembered that, even in the static restoration of ruins, there is a criterion of evaluation and choice for which the addition due to consolidation or the substitution of certain pieces of columns pose problems that inevitably and necessarily lead us back to the aesthetic instance and not only to that imposed by the respect for the integrity of the document[16] (Pane, 1971: 3).

As for Rossi, director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, who opened his talk with the second axiom of Brandi on the potential oneness of the work of art (Brandi, 2005: 50), historicity prevailed in the case of ruins:

It is legitimate to restore the monument only when there are serious conditions to do so and when the monument is not reduced to a ruined state, because in that case it is perfectly useless to go beyond a non-existent discourse with fervent imagination. The figurative unity in that case is an end in itself and remains the apparent unity of the found element which must only be reconsolidated as far as is permitted by static laws, but leaving it as it is for historicity. We cannot speak of unity if we do not refer to a complete work and if we are dealing only with elementary parts of a disappeared complex[17] (Rossi, 1971: 58).

In the midst of these many reservations about the relevance and limits of reconstruction interventions, Franco Minissi’s projects distinguished themselves by a bold and experimental approach. They were presented not only by Minissi himself, in the part of the second section dedicated to “science and conservation”, but also by the archaeologist Pietro Griffo, superintendent of Agrigento in the part of the same section dedicated to the “life of monuments”. Moreover, his works at the Greek fortifications of Gela, the Hellenistic theatre of Heraclea Minoa and the cathedral of San Gerlando in Agrigento were also presented in the exhibition.

Without going back in detail on the specific musealizzazione approach developed by Minissi and its relations with the theories of Cesare Brandi, which have already been extensively studied and commented on (Vivio, 2015), also by Nicholas Stanley-Price (Stanley-Price and Jokilehto, 2001), it is interesting to situate the architect’s contributions in the light of the discussions referred to above. The use, at Heraclea Minoa, of a transparent synthetic resin, such as “perspex”, to suggest the complete form of the theatre’s ruined cavea, was meant to allow the archaeological evidence to be protected and at the same time remain visible as a proof of validity of the transparent, suggested reconstruction (Figure 1). Thus, it attempted to reconcile the contradictory imperatives of preservation and visual reconstruction, in some kind of “virtual reality” before its time:

In all these cases, in fact, the parts reconstructed with the materials we are talking about, in addition to fully satisfying the need not to hide any of the original parts of the monument, have the advantage of differing clearly from them in matter and time, thus avoiding any confusion or interpretative error and, what is more important, the transparency of the material tends ideally to transform the restoration carried out into a graphic superimposition, realized in space, of the integrative or reconstructive hypothesis on the monument. The latter, I believe, is the most positive aspect of the technique on display as it is also the most rigorous and documented certainty in the elements that suggest integrative proposals of any kind on an ancient monument and always susceptible to evolution and therefore the restoration work should as much as possible remain on a theoretical level, avoid the falsehood of definitive superstructures and increase the possibility of further studies and consequent new hypotheses and restoration solutions[18] (Minissi, 1971: 286).

n the case of the transparent recomposition of the volumes of the Roman villa in Piazza Armerina, Minissi, who admitted that his intervention had replaced the evocative and romantic vision of the ruins, insisted on the fact that it had “the merit not only of providing an approximate indication of the third dimension of the monument, but also of expressing without inappropriate formal pretensions and with the utmost sincerity its functional role”[19] (Minissi, 1971: 287). In the restoration of the San Nicola convent in Agrigento to host the National Museum of Archaeology, presented by Pietro Griffo, the works involved the reconstruction of the southern wall which was in ruin and for which no traces of the original features could be found. In that case, “precisely to avoid the risk of erroneous reconstructions and for a brilliant idea of lightness and clarity, it was preferred to place a beautiful iron grid, regularly divided into rhombuses and entirely glazed, which takes in height both floors of the building”[20] (Griffo, 1971: 542).

FIGURE 1
HERACLEA MINOA HELLENISTIC THEATRE’S CAVEA. Restoration of the cavea using synthetic resin by Franco Minissi.
Image: ©ICCROM.

So in all cases, the architect’s interventions managed to combine the conservation of historical traces, the legibility of the volumetric wholeness of the ruined structure, the use or reuse of the site and the protection of the vestiges. Even if we know with hindsight that in some cases the protection has not proved as effective as Minissi would have liked, and may even have led to new disorders, put into perspective within the debates of the congress, the projects appear to be particularly innovative and subtle. This makes it all the more regrettable that some of these unique witnesses of a key moment in the doctrinal debates on restoration have disappeared: according to Stanley-Price’s sixth principle, they could have been preserved “as part of the history of ideas” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 41).

Finally, it should be noted that very few presentations dealt with anastylosis as such, which seems astonishing to say the least since it appears to be the only possible reconstruction within the charter. Both active in the antique city of Leptis Magna in Libia, the Italian Giacomo Caputo, archaeologist, and Giovanni Ioppolo, architect, emphasized the key role of the excavation process in the success and reliability of such “restorations”. Caputo considered that “a good anastylosis, almost ninety per cent of it, depends on paying attention during excavation, since the thing itself is what counts, rather than our abstract concepts”[21] (Caputo, 1971: 190), and Ioppolo confirmed that

it will be precisely within the limits, provided by the archaeological investigation in its broadest sense, that the restoration will find numerous elements that will contribute to the exact determination of the forms, or even better, to the safe and original architectural approach through the traces, the connections, which were noted during the previous investigation[22] (Ioppolo, 1971: 234).

The exhibition

The catalogue of the exhibition organized in parallel with the congress, edited by Marco Dezzi Bardeschi and Piero Sanpaolesi, provides an exceptional corpus of projects that were considered worth presenting to the international community (Figure 2). Meant to stimulate the reflections on methodological clarification to be discussed during the congress (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi, 1964), the exhibition displayed around 500 projects from 35 countries –quite logically, a third of these projects were Italian. Systematic exploitation of these data remains to be undertaken and would constitute a colossal task given the very uneven content of the entries. In some cases, they are limited to an identification of the building, without even mentioning the author of the project; in others, the record includes a short description of the building concerned and of the project carried out or in progress. A critical study of the exhibition, in connection with the congress, would therefore require documentation on each of the cited projects, which is a work totally out of proportion to the ambition of this article. What can we nevertheless draw from it for our purpose?

FIGURE 2
FRONT COVER. 1964 exhibition catalogue edited by Marco Dezzi Bardeschi and Piero Sanpaolesi

Even though Felix Darsy, Pontifical Rector of the Institute of Christian Archaeology, observed in his contribution to the congress on Modular laws and anastylosis that “a good quarter of the exhibited restorations (at Palazzo Grassi) present themselves as partial or total anastylosis”[23] (Darsy, 1971: 175), the information available through the catalogue only allows to tell that at least 10 to 15% of the projects on display involved the consolidation, enhancement or reconstruction of ruined archaeological sites. However, it is not possible to determine the proportion of these sites involving reconstruction work: for example, the Lebanese, Tunisian, Greek and Egyptian projects for sites dating back to the Antiquity are just mentioned without any development, as are a few Thai stupas. Only a limited number of projects, mainly from Italy and Mexico, are briefly explained.

n Sicily, in addition to Franco Minissi’s projects already commented on, let us mention the Temple E in Selinunte, restored by the engineer Napoleone Gandolfo and implying “recomposition and recovery of the architectural structures after restoration and consolidation”[24] (Figure 3) and the theatre of Taormina, where some parts of the cunei were reconstituted using ancient stone elements, and a section of the vault of the inner ambulatory of the cavea was reconstructed (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi, 1964: 7-8). Other examples in Italy included the roman theatres of Ferento and Volterra, as well as the amphitheaters of Ortonovo and Susa. In Ferento, near Viterbo, Raffaele Rinaldis carried on the “restoration of the cavea stairs and vaults of the scene on the basis of the surviving elements”[25] and in Volterra, near Pisa, “the anastylosis of the columns”, directed by Giacomo Caputo (Figure 4), “was made possible by the observation during the excavation of the fallen position of the columns and capitals”[26] (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi, 1964: 21, 33). At the amphitheater of the Luni, in Ortonovo, the structure of the arches was recovered “partly with original elements partly with replacement elements,”[27] and the crepidine, restored and reconstructed, while in Susa, “reintegrations [were] limited to short stretches of safe recomposition (such as the steps of the first order, the walls at the side of the fauces and those next to the podium passages)”[28] (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi 1964: 34, 37).

The Mexican reconstruction projects displayed in the exhibition section proposed by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia seemed to be far more ambitious and extensive. Among others, the Maya sites of Labná (Figure 5), Edzná (Figure 6), Palenque and Mul-Chic were subject to interventions described as “recomposition” or “partial reconstruction” using, in some cases, ancient techniques and construction systems (Labná and Palenque), and in some others, “reinforced concrete beams incorporated in the original and not visible”[29] (Edzná). In Mul-Chic, a “complete reconstruction of the outer face of the façade alone” was carried out, “in order to allow the visit of the early construction and at the same time to appreciate the overlapping of the base of the 8th century, which marks the beginning of the Puuc period, with

FIGURE 3
RESTORATION OF THE TEMPLE E IN SELINUNTE BY NAPOLEONE GANDOLFO. Survey and views before and after intervention.
Image: Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi (1964: np).

FIGURE 4
RECOMPOSITION PROJECT FOR THE ROMAN THEATER IN VOLTERRA BY GIACOMO CAPUTO AND VIEW OF THE WORKS.
Image: Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi (1964: np).

the stylistic characteristics of the old Mayan Empire”[30] (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi, 1964: 133, 134). But it is certainly the site of Teotihuacan that best illustrated this trend towards the reconstruction of the most emblematic historical sites: considered “the most majestic ceremonial centre of a typical pre-Hispanic city”, the façades of its various monumental buildings were “systematically completed”, the “simple consolidation of the remains of the original structures” being the exception (Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi, 1964: 134).

FIGURE 5.
RESTORATION AND PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF A BUILDING IN PUUC STYLE.
Image: Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi (1964: np).

FIGURE 6.
EDZNA
Image: Dezzi Bardeschi e Sanpaolesi (1964: np).

Although very incomplete, this first examination of the projects exhibited at Palazzo Grassi already leads to the conclusion that there was a great diversity of approaches to the theme of reconstruction, whether in terms of the acceptable degree of operations, the techniques used or the legibility of the intervention. Far from limiting themselves to the strict practice of anastylosis, the projects on display made use of techniques ranging from the most traditional to the most experimental –Minissi’s projects bear witness of this–, in the service of operations pursuing a variety of objectives, ranging from simple safeguarding or consolidation to tourism promotion and reuse. The very limited information provided by the catalogue does not allow a reading of the projects in the light of the principles of the forthcoming charter –even though it is known, for example, that the discrepancy of some of the Mexican projects with these principles would subsequently be highlighted (Molina-Montes, 1982). However, one thing is clear: the gap observed by Stanley-Price between the strictures of the Venice Charter and the practice was foreseeable. How could such a diversity of questions be answered by the principle of anastylosis alone?

The charter

Although it was signed by a group of 23 people, previous research has shown that the charter was drafted during the Venice Congress by a small group, working on the basis of the conclusions of the Athens Conference (1931) and a critical rereading of the Italian Carta del Restauro proposed by Roberto Pane and Piero Gazzola, entitled Proposte per una carta Internazionale del restauro (Pane e Gazzola, 1971; Pane, 2009; 2010; Houbart, 2014). In addition to these two Italian architects, the small group was composed of a Frenchman, the Chief Architect of Historic Monuments Jean Sonnier, and two Belgians: Paul Philippot, at that time Deputy Director of ICCROM, and Raymond M. Lemaire, Professor at the University of Louvain. Within this small group just as among the charter’s signatories,[31] a diversity of profiles was ensured: whereas Pane, Gazzola and Sonnier were architects, Philippot and Lemaire were art historians. Although they were not archaeologists by profession, the three architects also had some experience in archaeology. While archaeological sites occupied a relatively limited place in their respective careers as restorers –let’s mention, for Roberto Pane, the Roman theatre of Benevento in the 1920’s (Russo, 2010), for Piero Gazzola, the arenas of Verona (Castiglioni, 2009) and for Jean Sonnier, his activity as Chief Architect for the Gard department– all three visibly enjoyed recognition in this field since they were appointed experts for UNESCO in the late 1940’s and 1950’s for missions involving issues about archaeology.[32]

What does an examination of the successive versions of the charter and the documents on which it is based tell us? Between the first known version of the text, drafted during the congress, the version adopted by the assembly at the closing session on May 29, and the final version, reworked by Raymond M. Lemaire on the basis of exchanges of letters with some of the signatories and other colleagues during the autumn of 1964, only minor editorial corrections can be noted as far as archaeological sites are concerned. From the outset, it was planned to refer to existing excavation standards, even though the first draft did not explicitly mention the UNESCO Recommendation of 1956. While encouraging “all initiatives likely to facilitate the understanding of the updated monument without ever distorting its meaning,”[33] article 13, which became article 14 in the version of 29 May and then article 15 in the final version, limited any possibility of reconstruction to anastylosis, defined in the same way throughout the drafting process.[34] This illustrates that the congress debates had no direct impact on the writing of the charter, for this article at least.

In fact, as to this definition, the first version of the article remained very close to article 3 of the Italian Carta del restauro without taking into account a question introduced by Pane and Gazzola in their critical rereading of the document. Indeed, the 1931 document mentioned, as did the Venice Charter after it, that

in monuments far away from our customs and civilization, as ancient monuments are, any completion must ordinarily be excluded, and only the anastylosis, i.e. the recomposition of existing dismembered parts with the possible addition of those neutral elements that represent the minimum necessary to integrate the line and ensure the conditions of conservation, is to be considered.[35]

For Pane and Gazzola, a clarification of this article was necessary to avoid confusion between anastylosis and restoration:

It should be pointed out, however, that for most Mediterranean regions we cannot speak of pure and simple anastylosis, i.e. the reassembly or mechanical reassembly of dismembered parts. We know, in fact, that even in the typical case of the recomposition of the sections of Doric columns there is inevitably the need for the insertion of new parts, for which the whole problem of restoration is present, thus excluding the hypothesis of pure and simple anastylosis. This clarification is necessary in order to avoid much more complex operations, justifying them with the name of “anastylosis”[36] (Pane e Gazzola, 1971: 15).

Both architects were therefore of the opinion that the blurring of the boundary between reconstruction and restoration, which several interventions at the congress would also point out, could lead to harmful amalgamations. However, this suggestion was not retained for the drafting of the article, which therefore continued to ignore a crucial question posed by the reality in the field.

In spite of this, it does not seem that article 15 of the charter was quickly considered inadequate, as was the case with article 14 on “historic sites of monuments”. We will not return here to the process of revision of the charter initiated by Piero Gazzola and Raymond M. Lemaire, in their capacity as President and Secretary General of ICOMOS, in the early 1970s, which we have studied elsewhere (Houbart, 2014; 2016). Although it never came to fruition, this process is fascinating to study, as it reveals the reception of the charter throughout the world and the limits that were quickly recognized in the face of questions raised by field practice in the context of the rapid extension of the definition of heritage and the globalisation of debates.

The desire to revise the charter had its origins in the inadequacy of its principles in the face of questions raised by the renovation of historic towns: contrary to what article 14 had proclaimed, the experience of Gazzola and Lemaire in this field, as well as their implications in the debates of the Council of Europe on “reanimation”, had shown them that principles designed for the restoration of monuments could not be transposed as such to urban or rural areas (Houbart, 2014; 2016). However, the consultation organized by ICOMOS through its National Committees also allowed to suggest revisions or additions to any article in the document. What was the status of the conditions for reconstruction as laid down in article 15?

The files relating to the first round of the review process in the 1970’s kept in Raymond M. Lemaire’s archives retain eighteen responses from national committees to the consultation launched in 1975. Only five of them address the issue of reconstruction, which shows that either the issue was not at the centre of the respondents’ concerns –unlike that of the historic sites– or that article 15 was generally considered satisfactory. Of these five responses, those of the Japanese National Committee and of UNESCO were the ones that most fundamentally challenged the principles of reconstruction of ruins, heralding the discussions that would take place twenty years later in Bergen and Nara. Hiroshi Daifuku, on behalf of UNESCO, pointed out the inadequacy of the charter’s principles with regard to wooden architecture, such as that of the Nordic countries or Japan:

Because it is organic matter, it is difficult to preserve wooden ruins. A stone or brick ruin can retain its identity for many years or even centuries. A wooden monument in a state of ruin (e.g. without a roof) would soon disappear. Hence the fact that the reconstruction or construction of shelters for such monuments causes major and unavoidable changes in appearance, and is a marked difference from monuments constructed of inorganic material[37] (Daifuku, 1976).

The Japanese committee, for its part, advocated that unearthed archaeological sites should be “after documentation, filled in for conservation” while leaving them exposed “should be done only in the case that one is sure it can not be deteriorated. To do so, a shelter could be built over the site.” Moreover, “to conserve a wooden structure, it could be rebuilt in the exact former size and style every certain years (like some Shinto-shrine in Japan). Thus, the structure will be revived with freshness” (Kobayashi, 1977).

The proposals of the United Kingdom and the United States, one of which provided for a complete reorganization of the order of the articles and the other for the drafting of a completely new document, shared the desire to offer better definitions of the terms used, and therefore endeavoured to define, inter alia, reconstruction. In the British document, reconstruction was broadly defined as “the recreation of vanished buildings in an exact copy of the original but using new material” and was still excluded a priori, with the exception of anastylosis (Saunders, 1977). On the other hand, anastylosis disappeared from the document drawn up on behalf of the American committee. However, this does not mean that reconstruction, defined as “the re-creation of vanished buildings on their original site”, was encouraged: despite its assertion that “the reconstructed building acts as the tangible, three-dimensional surrogate of the original structure, its physical form being determined by archaeological, archival and literary evidence”, the document underlined that

this [approach] is one of the most hazardous culturally: all attempts to reconstruct the past, no matter what academic and scientific resources are available to the preservationist, necessarily involve subjective hypotheses. In historiography, such hypotheses can be (and indeed are) constantly revised: in architecture, the hypothesis is obdurate, intractable and not easily modified.

Therefore, the use of such operations had to be limited to specific cases, only when reconstruction was “essential for understanding and interpreting the value of a historic district”, when “no other building or structure with the same association” had survived, and provided that “sufficient historical documentation exists to insure (sic) an exact reproduction of the original” (US ICOMOS, 1977).

The last response addressing reconstruction came from Turkey. Authored by the archaeologist Cevat Erder, who would later become director of ICCROM, it consisted in a systematic comment of each article of the charter. Considering that “structures revealed by archaeological excavations are rare and unique” and that in consequence, “from a historical point of view they constitute important reference points for agencies and as such should be handled with the utmost of care,” he did not call into question the restrictions imposed by the charter: “If all their component parts may be found and reinstated with confidence then anastylosis is permitted.” But aware of the blurred boundaries between anastylosis and restoration, like Pane and Gazzola on the eve of the Venice Congress, he nevertheless specified:

For anastylosis application that fall outside these requirements we refer the reader to the section of article 9 which deals with hypothesis and imputations. Reconstruction on archaeological sites which has not conformed to the principles of anastylosis has generally damaged the balance of the site or in combination with the inadequacies of the environment as a whole done little more than produce the appearance of a disorganized open-air museum (Erder, 1977).[38]

Finally, it is interesting to examine the revised version of the charter presented to the ICOMOS General Assembly in Moscow in May 1978. Considered “more prolix and more obscure than the charter itself” (ICOMOS, 1978: 14), it was rejected by the assembly. However, its authors, Raymond Lemaire and Jean Sonnier, working on the basis of the consultation with the national committees and a meeting of experts organized at Ditchley Park Castle in England in May 1977, had taken the time to revise the article on archaeological sites. Now article 20, as a result of the insertion of a section on historic towns, the text on “Excavations and ruins” abandoned, in its final version, any reference to anastylosis, limiting reconstruction to “exceptional circumstances” and referring, for interventions on ruins, to the previous articles of the charter, as Cevat Erder had done:

Ruins and archaeological sites should be maintained so as to ensure both their conservation as a whole and the long-term protection of their individual elements. Steps taken to further understanding of them, while desirable, must not detract from their historical significance, artistic or picturesque beauty. All works undertaken in archaeological sites and ruins should respect the principles established in art. 4 to 13. Reconstruction should be ruled out, unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify it.[39]

Archaeological sites: the limits of interpretation

As this trip to the Venice Congress and through the drafting and first versions of the revision of its famous charter illustrate, Stanley-Price’s observation of an inconsistency between theory and practice with regard to reconstruction could have been foreseen even before the opening of the congress. In the absence of a clearly defined distinction between anastylosis and restoration, as Pane and Gazzola had already called for in their preparatory document (Pane e Gazzola, 1971), in the case or archaeological sites, a principles loophole has indeed been perpetuated with regard to “when restoration should be carried out or how far it should go” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 32). And yet, their reconstruction does represent “in many respects an extreme example of restoration” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 33), as illustrated by several presentations at the congress and numerous projects on display at the exhibition. In a contribution entitled “Changing attitudes to restoration”, British architect Harold A. Meek had even gone so far as to underline the role played by the practice of anastylosis in the gradual rehabilitation of “the idea of restoration, which under the influence of Ruskin and Morris had become something of a dirty word” (Meek, 1971: 36).

The archives do not reveal the reasons why the article devoted to this crucial issue has seen so little evolution, from the conclusions of the Athens conference and the Italian Carta del Restauro to the Venice Charter, at a time when the world of heritage was yet constantly facing new challenges, such as the development of cultural tourism. Nevertheless, some hypotheses can be put forward, such as the sensitivity of these issues at a moment when the second reconstruction was still close and when the emerging globalization of debates was already revealing diverse approaches to the same problem, as evidenced by the visceral reactions to Charles W. Porter’s positions at the congress. The question of reconstruction would in any case remain sensitive: in the margins of an intermediate version of the above mentioned 1978 revision project of the charter, R. M. Lemaire wrote, in reaction to a suggestion by Jean Sonnier –anticipating the 2005 Riga Charter– to soften the rules in the case of a cataclysm or war, where “a national or social feeling […] justifies the desire to recover part of the past by reconstructing its main physical manifestations”: “better to avoid discussions on this point.”[40]

So in the absence of clear rules, the principles proposed by Stanley-Price, which are in many ways in line with the concerns of the various actors we have been talking about, are more than welcome, useful and enlightening. But to conclude this article, I would like to add another observation by Raymond M. Lemaire, which questions us all the more since it comes from one of the drafters of the Venice Charter. Speaking of safeguarding in general, he pointed out, as early as 1976, that

it would be too simple to believe that the mere application of a few rules would resolve such a delicate issue. Beyond the talent indispensable to the creation of any valid work, it is above all the state of mind that is the guarantee of success. In general, two qualities characterize it: respect for the ancient work and modesty in the conception of the intervention. A monument is not in itself an opportunity for today’s architect to assert his personality[41] (Lemaire, 1976).

This is still more true in the case of archaeological ruins. At the 1957 Paris Congress already, Luigi Crema, Superintendent of Monuments in Milan, was of the opinion that in the field of archaeology, restoration works, based on the interpretation of carefully surveyed existing elements, should aim at “recomposing as far as possible the original architecture.” But he also stated that whereas this work had “the character of a truly new project,” it lacked “the creative freedom that gives or should give rise to new works of architecture.” This creative effort was here “replaced by an effort of imagination which, however, is not free, but must, on the contrary, be strictly framed and controlled by the data of the discovery”[42] (Crema, 1960: 364).

So, even though the temptation may be great, in the case of archaeological ruins, “to improve or correct someone else’s text” (Stanley-Price, 2009: 32), the limits of interpretation must be carefully set. In the field of literature, Umberto Eco himself pointed out that

after a text has been produced, it is possible to make that text say many things, in certain cases a potentially infinite number of things, but it is impossible or at least critically illegitimate to make it say what it does not say. Texts frequently say more than their authors intended to say, but less than what many incontinent readers would like them to say (Eco, 1994: 148).

So do archaeological sites as well.

Archaeologists and architects therefore have every interest in carefully listening to their voices in order to nourish their dialogue in a common creative though critical state of mind.

*

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Notes