Sul limitare del Mediterraneo: Antonelli e la fortificazione di Gibilterra

The Rock of Gibraltar rises on the West, on the European side, closing the Mediterranean basin, and corresponds to the Phoenician Calpe, one of the two Hercules’ columns that in antiquity bordered the limit of the world. Inhabited since prehistoric times, the small peninsula is characterized by a promontory with cliffs overlooking the sea and it has an history intimately linked to its strategic position and therefore characterized by military events and the development of fortifications to defend the important commercial port and outpost control of Mediterranean. First military structures date back to Arab conquest even if not much remains of the high-medieval fortresses, especially as result of numerous conquer wars that alternated from 1309, when King of Castile Ferdinando IV tried to reclaim the peninsula, until 1501 when the city was finally incorporated into the dominions of Queen Isabella of Castile. In 1552 Carlo I sent Giovanni Battista Antonelli, an Italian military engineer at the service of Spanish Crown, to erect bastions and a military wall to fortify the city. The remains of Antonelli’s fortresses are still visible today and it is possible to virtually reconstruct the development of the fortified system that characterized Gibraltar during the successive wars, until the treaty of Utrecht which sanctioned the dominion of Great Britain and beyond the Great Siege of Gibraltar that saw the Spanish trying in vain to subtract the peninsula from the British. Through inspections and photogrammetric surveys, the contribution presents a reflection for the study of Antonelli’s defensive system in the desire to document what remains of the military system designed by the Italian engineer. The elaboration of 3D models of analysis, from architectural scale to wall masonry detail, identifies methodological processes of digitization for the development of a possible project of enhancement of the wall circuit within the modern urban and infrastructural asset of the Rock.