SPANIARDS MOCK CASTLE RESTORED AS SMOOTH CEMENT BLOCK Meanwhile, in VillamartÃn: Restoration work was recently warpped up on the Matrera castle in southern Spain, fueling backlash from locals, Spanish social media, and the national cultural preservationist group Hispania Nostra, which calls the building’s redo “truly lamentable” and “a massacre of Spanish heritage.” The architect behind the castle’s renovation — which appears to have involved the embedding of the remaining crumbling stone walls into a smooth white box roughly echoing the pre-deterioration volume of the structure — says the project’s main purpose was to prevent the ruins from collapsing; 2011 plans had to be modified after flooding destroyed one of the walls in 2013. Before that, “we couldn’t even get 100 signatures together to restore the building,†says the curator of the local museum. Now that the privately-funded project is complete, he says, “there’s been an outcry. It makes me very frustrated.†Check out video of the castle’s makeover here. [New York Times, Guardian]
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Ruins like this are all over Europe. If the original structure was not solid enough to attach wood walls and modern glass extensions then the project should have been scrapped. The current incarnation looks hideous.
Yeah, no, Commenter7.
This incarnation keeps the structure alive – not a pile of bricks – and current in conversation! History needs to be seen, remembered and discussed.
I say “Kudos!” It’s better than no remediation at all.