Restorations and rebirth
The rocky burg’s rebirth
The urban architecture of the hamlet of Labro develops along the slope on three levels:
- The houses of artisans and farmers on the lowest section,
- The palaces of nobility on the middle level,
- On top of the old fortified hamlet, which today consists only of a defensive tower, one can find the Nobili Castle and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore built on top of the old armory.
Labro has been the first place in all Latium to have been under a process of restoration to preserve its form. At the end of the ‘60s the old village, which was abandoned due to its scarce compliance with safety standards, was discovered by the Belgian architect Van Mossevelde, guest of Ottavia Nobili Vitelleschi whom wanted him to see the place; Thus he began a daring challenge of urban restoration: by using materials in the area and, above all, original sketches he managed to rekindle the authentic mood of the old medieval fortress and make it shine again.
The old Franciscan cloister’s safeguard
Facing Labro one can find the former Franciscan Cloister of the Osservanti order. Its style is plain, in armony with the Franciscan’s spirit. The first religious settlement was established between 1639 and 1680 by the Francescani Osservanti order, one of the many groups that were born after the death of Saint Francis, characterised by an aspiration for an ascetic life and a methodical usage of goods. The degradation of the cloister began at the end of the Nineteenth Century when the entirety of the place fell under the property of the town hall of Labro and friars departed from it. During the Second World War it was even used by German troops as a storage facility. The restoration project launched in the earliest years of the ‘90s, under the supervision of the architect Fabio Pitoni.
Unable to rebuild with accuracy the cloister of yore due to some ancient parts that needed preservation, he chose to use bricks for the new works, a material in contrast with the old rocky sections of the structure, but at the same time already used in the past: there were already walling sections composed of bricks.
“Wounds have to leave scars, because that’s the only way by which communities may keep their memory alive”.
Fabio Pitoni
