The Old City of Jerusalem between Heritage and Urban Renewal: Public Buildings and Typological Aspects: Fid-Bau Portal

The Old City of Jerusalem between Heritage and Urban Renewal: Public Buildings and Typological Aspects

Rociola, Giuseppe Francesco

The interest in the study of public buildings in ancient nucleus of Jerusalem stems from the need to investigate the develop principles of the urban structure between the Tyropoeion Valley and the western edge and northern of the Haram al-Sharif. The building fabric including madrasas, Ribat, hammams and the Suq al-Qattanin is only the latest result of a layering process culminating with the transformation work produced by Mamluks from 1260 until 1517. The identification of a modular distance between the routes or the measure correspondence in the individual blocks, suggest the adaptation of a previous planned urban fabric, dating probably at least to the Herodian period. The increase of religious pilgrimages and trades in Jerusalem during the Mamluk sultanate has stimulated an intensive building activity, centered mainly in the construction of Madrasas and Ribat, organically aggregated to form an urban fabric heavily infilled. In a period running from mid-XIII at the end of the fifteenth century, the building fabric finds its final set, then completed by Ottomans between the sixteenth and seventeenth century and involving especially, in addition to the reconstruction of the walls, the building of small libraries, the upgrading of existing buildings and construction of fountains in nodal points of urban structure. The paper explains a research in progress about historical urban fabrics of Jerusalem, [1] in which the close relation between the urban structure and the buildings is one of the main aspects toward an urban renewal hypothesis of the Old City, that is characterized by complex relationship among international heritage programs, public safety, and contemporary uses coherent with the role of the ancient public buildings according to the urban history.