The medieval church on the Acropolis of Cumae,Pozzuoli (Italy): Reconstruction of the archeological ruins through a multidisciplinary approach

Abstract

The excavations conducted in the triangular terrace on the Acropolis of Cumae, Pozzuoli (Italy), since 2019 by the Scuola Superiore Meridionale together with the Università della Campania “L. Vanvitelli,” and the scientific direction of Prof. Carlo Rescigno, have unveiled the ruins of a medieval church. Its remains show an almost square-plan single nave church with apse constructed with masonry made of blocks of squared tuff and mortar. Its nearly 2 m above ground level walls tell little about its original architectural layout, and in particular whether its roof structure was vaulted or duo-pitched. To reach a plausible hypothesis of how the roof structure of the medieval church may have been made, a multidisciplinary approach has been adopted, comparing data coming from the stratigraphic interpretation of the excavation, from the architectural reading of its ruins, and from the study of the in-plane and out-of-plane responses of the masonry walls through nonlinear analyses performed using Finite Element Macro-modeling approach. The purpose of the paper is to reconstruct the most creditable reconstructive hypothesis of the roof structure of the medieval church, integrating data deduced from the results from an archeological, architectural, and structural point of view.