Thanks to a Collaboration Agreement signed by the Municipality of Bologna and RAB studio, in the spring of 2021 a workshop for surveying and restoring the Via Saragozza portico interior was organised. It involved a group of students of Class 5 of the E. Renzi Scientific Secondary School (Maestre Pie Schools of Bologna) and a group of junior Class 3 students of the same school. With reference to Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research Decree 774/2019, which defines the guidelines for the paths for soft skills and for orientation in preparation of the state examination, the students were coordinated by design and art history professor and architect Romeo Pauselli, in the capacity of internal tutor (Alternating School and Work Programme, PCTO), while the architect Anna Maria Ragazzini held the position of external tutor. This proposal was also placed on the list of those presented to the Municipality of Bologna by the LIONS 108 Tb district committee for the UNESCO nomination of the Bologna porticoes.
The first stage, carried out in the field by several students of the Elisabetta Renzi Scientific Secondary School, who had previously trained in an educational school-work programme regarding surveying and restoration, consisted of the photographic survey of the internal face of the portico in Via Saragozza from the Bonaccorsi Arch to the Meloncello Arch, to document the current condition of the façades of the portico interior. Afterwards, the students worked on the alignment and construction of the photomosaic created in the computer laboratory of the Renzi Secondary School and on the digital restoration of the surfaces surveyed with recolouring of the damaged/defaced portions.
The projects were exhibited to the public at Palazzo d’Accursio in December 2021.