Damage diagnosis of Ponte Rotto, a roman bridge along the ancient Appia

This paper describes the results of the damage diagnosis performed on Ponte Rotto, a Roman bridge on the ancient Appia way located close to the city of Benevento (southern Italy). Despite it can be considered one of the most important remains of this type of monument in Campania region, the bridge was abandoned for centuries, being in a rather poor state of conservation; therefore, an accurate damage diagnosis has been carried out using an interdisciplinary approach, in order to plan conservative, preventive and restoration work for the requalification of this archaeological heritage. Photogrammetric survey and damage diagnosis following the Fitzner's method allowed identifying and quantifying the geomaterials adopted for the construction of the bridge and the weathering forms affecting it. Georeferenced orthoimages permitted the mapping of their areal distribution, the definition of the damage categories, and the estimation of the linear and progressive damage indexes, that revealed a definitely bad conservation state.