Work packaging model per le ipotesi costruttive del Mausoleo di Teodorico

The enigmatic mausoleum of Theodoric, dating back more than 1500 years, is included among the eight UNESCO World Heritage monuments of the city of Ravenna since 1996. The mausoleum stands out among all the others in Ravenna, because of its atypical shape: it lacks the byzantine mosaic decorations and it is built with limestone blocks of Aurisina, unlike the more widespread bricks. These features make the mausoleum unique, arousing the curiosity of countless scholars who have been trying for centuries to solve the enigma. Many theories and legends revolve around this monument and its construction, including those related to the laying of the impressing monolithic dome. Construction hypotheses are many and often discordant. Beginning with the earliest historical sources and continuing through the centuries, many scholars have addressed the problem of how the imposing monolithic dome was transported and placed on top of the monument. Thanks to bibliographic research of existing documentation, it was possible to reconstruct a picture of the most plausible hypotheses formulated over the years. For each hypothesis an in-depth analysis and commentary was made. The Work Packaging Model approach is a project management method based on the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) technique, which aims at classifying the project’s Work Packages for Project Control processes in a hierarchical way, has been used to understand the construction methodology of the mausoleum. Considering all the hypotheses formulated over the years, the knowledge of the time and the historical and territorial context of implementation, WBS structures were then made with the aim of comparatively evaluating the different implementation hypotheses considered in the scientific literature, therefore temptative network models of building processes can be created.