On restoring and reviving lost religious buildings. Multi criteria analysis techniques to address an increasingly underused patrimony

Historical religious heritage is vital for territorial identity. Such heritage, besides comprising most often wonderful landmarks, is a defining part of the shared identity of the population and an indispensable thread woven deep into the social fabric. In Italy, some of the buildings that once housed worship-related functions have today lost their purpose due to various causes. The conservation of these numerous historical architectures requires large amount of funds and resources. However, attempts of reviving historical sites might not succeed and consequently lead to a waste of resources. Consequently, the wise allocation of the available resources is paramount. This work studies and proposes a MCA-based method aimed at supporting conservation designers and public decision makers in prioritizing actions and allocating resources where they can be most effective to the greatest benefit of territories and their communities. The study area corresponds to three Italian administrative districts in the central region of Tuscany. The methodology is applied to a case-study comprised of 480 Italian architectures, including churches, oratories and chapels, which were thus further investigated. The architectures are described by a set of criteria and taken as alternatives. In order to select the ten most suitable alternatives to be used, we applied the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). We chose this method because of its ability to decompose the complex decision problem involving architectural heritage into different levels of hierarchies.