Villa Adriana e l'immagine contemporanea delle rovine. Musealizzazione del complesso delle palestre

Abstract Relationship between architecture and ruin is widely been explored by scholars and reaserchers, also considering its closed connection with some of those important happenings in history of architecture. If we only take care of the influence of ancient roman's ruins in further architectural experience, we could consider them as a source of constructive methods and also as cultural landmark for those architects and builders, that from Renaissance to Neoclassicim, tried to repeat the ancient splendour. Surveying ruins would be a constant in much of young architects learning path. But in some cases this application of studies reveals something more then the fascination of his author: this is the case of Maarten van Heemskerck's drawings. Subjects of his representation during his life time in Rome are San Peter Cathedral and the Belvedere in Vatican which were under constraction. In van Heemskerck drawings we can see the fascination of the ancient ruins insomuch as he drew buildings as they were those ruins he could see not much far (Caracalla Baths, Massenzio Cathedral...). Such a drawings reveal how much architecture in its dawn (under construction) and in its sunset (ruins) tent to be similar. It seems to be that architecture, seen between state of art and its consuption, belongs to one timeless moment. This is what John Soane's drawing project for the Bank of England supposed to demonstrate. This picture is one of the most fascinating in the whole history of architecture and represents a project as it was discovered as an ancient palace: this is not only linked to Soane's love of antiquary, on the contrary it puts the light on an important feature of architecture. This ancient dicipline remains strictly related to a few rates, a few forms that are been repeated and improved along all times but they definely don't belong to anytime.