Project within the Città del Tufo Archaeological Park. Composing the fragments of an ancient body.

This project, developed within the Città del Tufo Archaeological Park in southern Tuscany, reflects on the role of design in reactivating the fragmented legacy of archaeological sites. Moving beyond the conventional notion of «ruins», the text adopts the metaphor of «lacerti» – living muscles of a dead body – to describe remains as discontinuous yet still pulsating fragments, capable of generating new meanings. The project frames musealisation as an interpretative act that recomposes fractures without erasing them, balancing philological rigor and poetic evocation. The aim is not to reconstruct an illusory unity, but to restore relationships, contexts and legibility, allowing fragments to speak again within a renewed spatial and narrative order. The intervention focuses on the rupestrian settlement of Vitozza, a stratified yet “frozen” medieval town abandoned between the 15th and 16th centuries, where built and excavated architectures coexist. The project seeks to reconnect Vitozza physically and culturally to Sorano and San Quirico through a structured path system that becomes the new backbone of the site. Rammed tuff pavements, marked routes, “cippi”, selective repaving and rest areas transform walking into a cognitive, peripatetic experience, enabling visitors to reconstruct spatial and historical relationships through movement. Complementary interventions include a documentation centre in Sorano and a visitor centre in San Quirico, conceived as thresholds to the archaeological landscape. Both adopt measured, site-specific architectural languages rooted in local materials and morphology. Overall, the project proposes musealisation as an open, evolving process that attributes new aesthetic and cultural value to discontinuity, transforming the landscape into an active fabric of memory.