Conservation and strengthening intervention at the ¨C¨ Tower in the Castle of Durrës, after the earthquake in November 2019

The 2019 earthquake that hit Durrës’ city caused severe damages on built cultural heritage and ¨C¨ Tower is listed among the damaged ones, with its partial collapse.The tower was built in the late 4th and early 5th century as part of the defensive walls of Durrës and has undergone different changes starting with the collapse of the east wall in the 13th century, to the reconstruction of the Angevin wall and followed by the exterior overall new layer added during Ottoman ruling period.

In 2019 CHwB-Albania, through the financial support of Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the scientific support of World Monuments Fund and Ministry of Culture, implemented the restoration process that followed three phases of activities:

– Phase 1 – Emergency stabilization

– Phase 2 – Design of conservation intervention

– Phase 3 – Implementation of conservation interventions

In order to design the conservation proposal, a series of studies were conducted as follows: i) geological; ii) geo radar documentation; iii) building materials; iv) archaeological survey, and v) seismic analysis through Kinematics, and numerical calculations applied to define the capacity of the structure. Then, the FEM analysis of relative movement was conducted, due to differential settlements, to compare the existing cracks in the structure with the ones generated by the numerical model.

Conservation and strengthening proposals were designed based on the interpretation of the results streaming from the analysis. These proposals consisted in the consolidation and repair of the foundation wall through traditional techniques, rebuilding of the collapsed wall with the fallen wall blocks installation of stainless-steel ties to improve the global behavior of the structure and cleaning and repairing of the wall to restore ¨C¨ Tower.