Protección, documentación y valorizaciónprincipios para la salvaguarda del patrimonio arquitectónico. El caso de estudio de las villas del campo de Cartagena

Abstract

Abstract: The countryside area of Cartagena offers an important repertoire of residential bourgeois architecture, with numerous villas of undoubted architectural and landscape value, thanks to the careful architecture and the close connection with its surroundings. These buildings have their origin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the port city reached a significant economic growth, feeling its effects clearly in society, where soon a wealthy powerful bourgeoisie emerging showed its strength and economic power through architecture. In this way, Cartagena was the object of a profound change according to the new architectural and urbanistic ideas in vogue. Immersed in this architectural fervor, the wealthy miners and merchants began to construct imposing residences in the environs of the city, far from the urban bustle, and destined for rest, leisure and social relation as well as to enjoy the views and the healthy and coolness of its natural environment. These villas have ended up becoming architectural landmarks, reference points of the aesthetic perception of the Cartagena countryside, forming a characteristic and unrepeatable cultural landscape, very typical of the area. In addition, sometimes they form important heritage groups, adding to the value of the building the forniture they contain and that forms a cultural unit with them, as well as the relationship they sometimes create with their surroundings, both it be a historic garden and the surrounding natural space. However, although these buildings - undoubtedly cultural interesting and located throughout the área - integrate the imagination of the Carthaginians as part of their historical memory and as symbols of their cultural richness, the progressive deterioration, that many of them have been suffering in recent years, is currently being. This research has therefore been approached with the intention of documenting and promoting the enhancement of this cultural heritage as a testimony of an era and its social situation, as well as its exceptional architectural and landscape quality. The methodology proposed to reach this objective has been based on the approach to the villages of the countryside area of Cartagena from a double perspective: extrinsic, taking care of the normative framework for the safeguarding of the architectural heritage; and intrinsic, deepening in the knowledge of the same through its scientific, cultural and critical reading. In order to do this, firstly, a reference has been sought in other similar experiences, choosing the case of the Italian villas of the Veneto as a model of reference to the success detected in the system followed for the safeguarding of this type of cultural property. In this way, the research has been developed through the study, confrontation and analysis between the normative framework for the safeguarding of the Spanish cultural heritage, concretized in the Region of Murcia, and the Italian experience, in which a special interest has been dedicated to practices directly related to Venetian villas. This perspective has provided the guidelines for the formulation and subsequent application of a methodological proposal for the safeguarding of the villages of the countryside area of Cartagena through the identification and documentation of all its specimens, the analysis of its current tutelary regime and the strategy approach leading to its recovery and valorization. http://repositorio.bib.upct.es/dspace/