A petrographic gateway to the Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (NE Sicily) built environment

We live immerse in a built environment made of buildings and infrastructures. Improving the built environment, also from an aesthetic point of view, has a positive feedback on the quality of life. In a stagnant economic scenario, the old cities of Italy face the challenge to revitalise their run-down areas with sensible and cost-effective conservation and restoration policies. This study focuses on the natural stones employed as building blocks for portal and window frames that characterise the urban landscape of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (NE Sicily). The use of basic petrographic observations allows to characterise the rock types employed between the XVI and XIX centuries for the construction of private buildings, to evaluate their decay degree and to propose a cost-effective restoration strategy based on the use of local stones, easy to found and, hopefully, with reasonable purchase and transportation costs.