Portali ad architrave triangolare nell'edilizia medievale: alcune considerazioni sui rapporti tra architettura ecclesiastica e residenziale tra alto e basso medioevo

This paper aims to analyze a characteristic typology of Medieval portals, with a widespread diffusion in the Medieval western Europe. Specifically, these portals are characterized by monolithic lintels with triangular or pentagonal shape, for which a systematic study in the academic literature is still missing. Depending on the geographical and the historical context, these portals have been variously interpreted: sometimes like Early Medieval elements, result of a systematic re-use of ancient material, or like a legacy of local building traditions which dates back to the Late Middle Ages. In the following work, after an introduction on the topic and a summary state of the research, with some methodological considerations, there is a census of all the portals identified through the systematic examination of the historical and archaeological literature, which allowed to identify the moment of their major expansion.The results and interpretations of this census were then compared with some case-studies on a local scale, which include both ecclesiastical and residential building, for which a reinterpretation of the traditional local chrono-typologies allowed to make some considerations about the relationship between high and medium building contractors.