The Archived Designs for the ‘Restoration’ of the House of D’Annunzio in Pescara

There are 93 designs of the house where Gabriele d’Annunzio was born preserved in the archives of ‘The Shrine of Italian Victories’, a hillside estate in Gardone Riviera. This corpus of graphic documents, coupled with another 51 designs registered in the State Archives of Pescara, has enabled the creation of a satisfactory framework, at times summary, at times very detailed, of what took place in the house, which is now a national monument, between 1921 and 1937. The designs were drawn up by the engineer Antonino Liberi, the architect Giancarlo Maroni and the Civil Engineering Department of Pescara in order to make the house considerably more comfortable by means of a substantial restoration. The critical reading and attentive analysis of these designs have shed light on their quality and also stand as witness to a series of problems which the restoration faced as well as to the final settlement.