Light decorations

Around the end of XIX century and the first decades of the XX century Cagliari, the largest city in Sardinia, and the small cities around, were minor contexts with insufficient economical resources. The new classes living in the historical centres showed the attained social standing building or rebuilding own houses. These were built in the gothic sites with traditional technologies, and were just adorned with cheap systems, with the use of three elements: terracotta ornaments, wrought iron or cast iron works and bargeboards. The first ones adorned windows and external boundary façades; the second ones were most of all used as gratings and balcony railings; the third ones finished the roofing with handcrafts that performed the double part of decoration and protection from rain. The use of these cheap architectural components allowed lower (on the economical side) social groups, to be the witness of the passage from the Neo-classical language to the Modern one. The combinations of terracotta modular products, even in the mass production repeativity, allowed to obtain a wide range of combinations which made every concerned façade an individual and particular one, and, at the same time, contributed to a kind of internationalisation of the signs. Despite the serious damages of the Second World War suffered by the building heritage, the façades adorned with this system were still abundant some decades ago. Nowadays many of these traces are also ruining because of the high price of reconstruction. Starting from the surveys worked out about fifteen years ago, the research verifies and compares the actual situation with the one existing until the early 90’s. At the same time it highlights the little attention given to these details supplying a useful basis for the building conservation and rehabilitation. The purpose is to keep high the interest on these techniques which, though by means of little handcrafts, is still today characteristic of large parts of the historical centres in Southern Sardinia.