QUANDO LA CROCE DI STRADE DIVENTA PIAZZA: ANALISI DEL CENTRO STORICO DI VILLAROSA.

At the time of its foundation, Villarosa followed a clear urban plan that was designed in 1973 by the female painter Rosa Ciotti. She had divided the town in four districts, creating an octagonal square in the center of the urban drawing: this central space was created by the intersection of two streets, Corso Garibaldi and Corso Regina Margherita, which represented the “cardo” and “decumanus” of the city. After the initial quadripartition, the town was continually characterized by a building expansion in the North- West direction, moving away from the early compositional scheme. The first part of this paper discuss, therefore, the theme of the road cross as an element of creation and hierarchy of urban centrality through the analysis of Villarosa’s plan from the historical-typological point of view. Part of the investigation is dedicated to the description of the urban type through a series of parallels with some foundation cities and with several examples of squares that are generated by road crosses: in this way it was possible to create a comparison with other Sicilian and non-Sicilian cases. In the second part of the essay the historical center of Villarosa has been analysed from the metric-material point of view. In particular, the graphic restitution of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and the two main streets was taken care of; this job was followed by a deterioration’s scan of the fronts of the main historical buildings in the city center, pointing out the need for a series of targeted interventions. The ultimate aim of this survey is, therefore, to define a working base for the realization of a future project, which will have to face the retraining of the urban center through the enhancement of the square and the buildings along the road cross.