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[EN] Castle Garth is the name of the fortified area once enclosed within the castle walls. In the fifteenth cen-tury Newcastle became a county in its own right, however, the Garth, being within the castle walls, re-mained part of the County of Northumberland. The Great Hall, a building separate from the Castle For-tress (the “Keep”), which in later years became known as the “Old Moot Hall”, was used by courts that sat at regular intervals in every county of England and Wales. The Fortress then became a prison for the County and was used as such until the early nineteenth century. Beginning in the fifteenth century, unlicensed traders, taking advantage of the fact that the city author-ities had no jurisdiction over the Garth area, settled there with their commercial activities. From the time of Charles II (1630-1685), the area then became famous for its tailors and shoemakers, who grew par-ticularly abundantly on the path known as “Castle Stairs”. In 1619 the fortified complex was rented by James I to the courtier Alexander Stephenson, who al-lowed the civilian houses to be built inside the castle walls. After the civil war, new houses were added until, towards the end of the eighteenth century, Castle Garth had become a distinct and densely popu-lated community, with a theater, public houses and lodgings. The main urban transformations were started in the early nineteenth century with the construction of the new Moot Hall called County Court. From 1847 to 1849 the fortified enclosure was partially com-promised by further intersections with the infrastructure for the construction of the railway viaduct, thus interrupting direct access from the Castle guarding the Black Gate. Despite the development of the contemporary city has affected the preservation of the ancient fortified palimpsest, a strong consolidated link is still maintained by the sedimentation of values of material and immaterial culture. The proposed contribution intends to present this process of integration between for-tified structure and city highlighting today the state of the art, the conservation, restoration and en-hancement initiatives undertaken in the last forty years

Over the past two decades the Council of Europe has addressed cultural heritage preservation policies to the use of heritage as cultural capital. Given this definition, the conservation of cultural capital is crucial, for its intrinsic value and as an investment for cultural, social and economic development. Thus, principles and areas of actions have been defined with the aim of underlying the importance of cultural values for territorial identity. Especially for cultural heritage with a potential for tourism, the decisions about valorization interventions are not always consensual, given the coexistence of different instances from local inhabitants and tourists. Selecting among the potential uses the one that could ensure the preservation of physical characters as well as intangible values, fueling economic development, is still a challenging policy and design issue. In this context, this paper proposes the use of a multi-methodological approach based on Choice Experiments and Social Multicriteria Evaluation to support the adaptive reuse on real case study. The NAIADE approach has allowed the decision maker to consider both socio-economic and technical dimensions within the same evaluation framework.

The introduction of the sustainable development concept in the field of cultural heritage preservation has led relevant changes to traditional interventions on historical buildings and areas. Although the idea of reusing cultural heritage is not new, the emerging concept of adaptive reuse stresses even more the importance of a holistic approach for addressing successful interventions. Selecting among the potential uses the one that could ensure the preservation of physical characters as well as intangible values, fueling economic development, is a challenging policy and design issue. In this context, this paper proposes the use of Choice Experiments to support the design of adaptive reuse strategies for three mostly unused castles in Northern Italy characterized by different states of conservation, accessibility and surrounding territorial context.

Abstract. The present paper proposes the use of GIS for the application of the so-called phenomenological approach to the analysis of the seismic behaviour of historical buildings. This approach is based on the awareness that the different masonry building typologies are characterized by different, recurring vulnerabilities. Thus, the observation and classification of the real damage is seen as the first step for recognizing and classifying these vulnerabilities, in order to plan focused preventive interventions. For these purposes, the GIS has proven to be a powerful instrument to collect and manage this type of information on a large number of cases. This paper specifically focuses on the application of the phenomenological approach to the analysis of the seismic behaviour of fortified buildings, including castles, fortresses, citadels, and all the typical historical constructions characterized by the presence of massive towers and defensive walls. The main earthquakes which struck Italy in the last 40 years (up to the recent Central Italy seismic swarm) were taken into consideration and described by means of shake maps. A previously published work has been continued with the addition of new data and some improvements, including a specific symbology for the description of building typologies and conservation status on the maps, the indications of damage levels and the comparison between shake maps in terms of pga and in terms of pseudo-acceleration. The increase in knowledge obtained and the broader frame given by the analysis of the data are here directed to the primary aim of cultural heritage preservation.

Abstract. Architectural, built heritage and historical buildings embody cultural heritage value and - as known - they need to be studied, documented, persevered and represented. Although there are many fields involved in these activities, none of these considered individually can fully represent the heritage with a complete level of detail and information. The present work aims to investigate the different levels of detail and granularity among different communities involved in historical buildings tasks to semantically define different concepts. In this context, ontologies are considered as an effective solution for the formal conceptualization of the domains involved, providing a common language for knowledge sharing and reuse. The study starts from existing knowledge (standards, vocabularies, thesauri, classifications) and conceptualisations for regional, urban and architectural heritage and geographic information for various tasks (restoration, documentation and heritage studies, risk prevention, heritage asset and facility management, education and tourism, urban planning and energy refurbishment/performance). A specific use case involving historical buildings in fortified centres across different levels of detail is described to show how existing knowledge and standards conceptualisation need to be integrated and extended.