Il cenobio di San Giorgio Maggiore a Venezia. Archeologia e storia dell’architettura per ricostruire i chiostri medievali

From the 11th century, the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore had an important role not only in religious events, but also in the social history of Venice; closely linked to the role of the doge through legal patronage, it has always constituted a sort of “state monastery”. The early buildings were completely demolished during the reconstructions that took place between the 15th and 17th centuries, after the monastery joined the reformed Congregation of Santa Giustina. A systematic analysis of archival and iconographic sources reveals its previous layout: a system of cloisters organized around the church, of which occasional stones remain. By georeferencing the plans of the pre-modern era, and using computer modelling, it has been possible to reconstruct the building virtually and to verify that, unlike most Venetian buildings, the new construction did not reuse the pre-existing foundations at all. It is therefore most likely that parts of the original structures remain below the level of the current buildings. Although the island has never been the subject of systematic excavation campaigns, it has however undergone a series of alterations aimed at consolidating both the embankments to protect the tides and the foundations of the various nuclei that make up the complex. These works, often carried out with archaeological assistance, have made it possible to recover a series of data that can be carefully related to architectural and archival evidence, to gain a clearer picture of the possible presence of surviving and buried structures that pre-date the great works of the 16th and 17th centuries.