Reflection on Architectural Image of Contemporary Archaeological Museums with Monuments In Situ

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, archaeological and restoration sciences took a significant step forward. Furthermore, the museum industry and the way in which monuments should be displayed was also changed. In recent decades, museums that mainly exhibit an immovable archaeological monument emerged. It seems that the creation of such exhibition spaces requires special approaches, methods and planning techniques that enable to display the monument in the most successful way, to ensure its preservation and to organize the immovable archaeology inside the building, the route of its examination and the rest of the exposition harmoniously. We consider a variety of techniques for the reconstruction of the monument unfinished parts and for the reconstruction of its three-dimensional characteristics, ranging from the widely known and used anastylosis to modern unique solutions, which are peculiar ‘scientific installations’. However, the most interesting aspect of the topic under consideration is what the image of architectural space (against which an archaeological monument will be perceived) should look like. The examples of archaeological museums show that their stylistics can be divided into four main directions: – Development of the heritage, when the archaeological museums’ architecture contains quotes from the cultures that are mainly exhibited inside. – Creation of neoclassical spaces unrelated to the national color of objects that are displayed in the museum. – Very simple and functional modernist architecture, which is essentially a neutral background for exhibits. – Images of the building, formed from postmodernist metaphors, which, in this case, are closely related to the informal redefinition of the museum’s specificities and cultural features. The main purpose of the report is to consider all the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of the approaches described above to the architectural solutions of archaeological museums. It seems that all directions are valid and the choice is always relatively subjective and depends on a variety of factors, including the specifics of the museum exposition, the volumetric-spatial characteristics of the monument, the context surrounding the museum building, etc.