Limite și legitimitate în restaurarea patrimoniului distrus Biserica „Adormirea Maicii Domnului” din Ocnele Mari
Limits and Legitimacy in the Restoration of Destroyed Cultural Heritage. The Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Ocnele Mari

Summary/Abstract: After more than half a century since the first accounts concerning its advanced state of decay, the Church of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God in Ocnele Mari was recently subjected to a complex restoration process which included its consolidation and volumetric restoration, but also the conservation-restoration of its artistic components. These measures had as purpose the recovery of the destroyed cultural heritage and the church’s return to cultural tourism. Having been affected structurally by the earthquakes of 1940 and 1977 and having been exposed for a long time to various external factors of degradation, the church became a ruin on the point of collapse. Initiated in 2017 and accomplished in 2020, the consolidation-restoration project had as objective not only the restoration and conservation of the original materials and paintings, but also a larger intervention of recovering the church’s architectural form. However, as any reconstruction of a ruined monument, this intervention can be regarded either as the sole means to rescue the church or, from the perspective of conservation, as the impairing of a monument’s authenticity which – through a careful consolidation and conservation – could very well exist in a ruined form. Despite all this, when the restoration becomes excessive and has as purpose to bring the ruins to their previous form (that is, the one preceding its decay), one is faced with the increasing danger of losing the monument’s authentic character.

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