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
