Il prodigio della risorsa termale. Architettura e natura in Sicilia: costruzione, salvaguardia, riuso compatibile

The interest related to the Sicilian thermal and healing waters is linked to a more wide history; this interest contributed to the development of studies about properties of springs, highlighting how the vast scope could benefit from a multidisciplinary analysis (humanistic, juridical and sanitary), with a particular attention to a more specifically architectural study, especially for their typological-functional, material-constructive and technological aspects. Sicilian baths during centuries attracted private and collective interest; these architectures concretized the ambition to innovation, in the case of construction-technological and health advances, as well as the preservation of memory. Real "fragments" of Nature, Architecture and Technique, the Sicilian Spas represent microcosms capable of autonomy; viewed as a whole, however, they constitute an integrated system, a "network" capable of establishing strong relationships of interdependence, by the likeness of some aspects that unite them and the versatility they offer in collaborating in unison to redevelopment of territory. The study will be useful for knowledge, safeguard, reuse and enhancement of places and architectures.