The Premise
Two cities, one discipline
Both teams were given equal speaking time, equal travel budgets, and equal credit on the published proceedings. There was no senior partner. The convening was hosted on neutral ground and chaired in turn.
Echoes of Heritage
Dialogue, Vol. V
Colosseum Conservation Dialogue
About this programme
Stone is patient, masons less so. We convened a small dialogue between conservators in Rome and master masons in Mali because the techniques are closer than the press releases suggest, and the lessons run in both directions.
Region
Rome, Italy
Years
2024 to 2025
Discipline
Conservation, exchange
Partners
Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma
The Project
A short note before the chapters.
A two year exchange between Italian conservators and African masonry guilds on the shared discipline of patient stone repair, hosted in Rome and Djenné in alternating seasons.
The Working Group
Quiet sessions, long benches
Across four sessions the working group catalogued shared problems: salt migration, micro-fracture, scaffold ethics, and the politics of replacement versus reinforcement. The catalogue is published openly with every contribution attributed.
The Exchange
Apprentices in both rooms
We funded six apprentices, three from each region, to spend a season working on the other's site. The diaries from that exchange form the second volume of the published proceedings and the seed of our next conservation programme.
In Their Words
“We have been repairing the same wall for two thousand years. So have they.”
Dr. Elena Marini, Soprintendenza, 2024
