The ephemeral city - Reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

THE EPHEMERAL CITY Reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

Iisa Aurora Eikaas studie nr.: 160117 Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering Arkitektur, Rum og Tid v. Guro Sollid Master’s thesis 2019

The Ephemeral City – Reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall ABSTRACT

The Aurelian Wall, Rome’s ancient fortification, is a transformative monument in the modern urban configuration of the city. First constructed in the 3rd century AD and immaculately preserved to date, the crumbling remains of the wall display the history of the city from late antiquity until today. As the emblematic structure has been swallowed by the ever-expanding urbanity, it has come to mark not the border of the city, but a division of a different kind – that between the monumental centre staged for tourists, and the surrounding residential peripheries.

This thesis explores the origins and implications of this division, studying the contrasting ways in which the authorities of Rome have attempted to exhibit and reappropriate the relics of the ‘eternal city’ during and after the 20th century. The contemporary monumental layout of Rome, fragmented by vast archaeological sites, is namely a modern embellishment. Following Rome’s promotion to the capital of the newly unified Italian state in 1871, large-scale excavations were initiated to reveal the glories of antiquity. The emblematic value of ancient ruins was further emphasized under the reign of Mussolini, making them a leading feature in urban planning.

The incremental gentrification of the city, produced by the clearance of its historical centre and further enhanced by the growth of mass tourism from the 1950’s, was later opposed by the Italian avant-garde. In the multidisciplinary festival Estate Romana, “Roman Summer”, from 1977 to 1985, architects and artists of various fields participated in reimagining and revitalising the historical relics through ephemeral and parasitic structures, with vibrant cultural and political activity.

Examining these diverse timescapes in the urban design and management of historical environments, this work explores the operative potential of temporal architectures in the context of Rome today. Critical of the current ‘musealisation’ of our built heritage, it calls into question the objectives and methods of architectural preservation. How can we reconcile the conflict between the desire to preserve the socioculturally pivotal monuments of the past and the ephemeral and utilitarian ethos of contemporary urban life?

Addressing the spatial and social problems fueled by the growing specialisation of the centro storico, this historical, philosophical and social inquiry aims to establish a theoretical framework for conserving a historical monument while being sensitive of the multiplicity of its functions and meanings in the contemporary city. With the example of the Aurelian Wall, this project develops instruments for designing in the dimension of time: for preserving the transient, moving towards the delicate linkage of the eternal and the ephemeral city.

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The Ephemeral City Reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall CONTENTS

Foreword: Building in time

4

1. Introduction

7

2.

14

2.1. The evolution of the fortified city

14

2.2. Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state

22

3.

Ancient walls in the modern era

30

3.1 Modern readings of historical walls

30

3.2. The Aurelian Wall – a collage of meanings and materials

36

4.

Rome interrupted – reclaiming the city

42

4.1. Heritage paradigms of the Italian postmodern

42

4.2. Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

46

5.

Controversies in conservation

58

5.1. Commodified heritage – historicity as a tourist attraction

58

5.2. Urban ruinscapes – conserving the Aurelian Wall

64

6.

The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

Spaces of possibility

70

6.1. Other timescapes – between the eternal and the ephemeral city

70

6.2. Experimental environments and temporary solutions

78

Bibliography

86

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Foreword: Building in time A look into the art and literature of previous centuries will show us that ruins have assumed multiple meanings beyond the obvious connotations of loss and destruction. In the words of Jason Perry, “time deforms meaning as surely as it deforms stone, and the meaning of deformed stone is likewise deformed by time.”1 Attracting a plurality of interpretations, the Roman relics have had a unique place in our collective consciousness as a near-mythical architectural category since the wake of the Renaissance, but especially after the rise of Romanticism in Western art and philosophy in the early 19th century. Having evoked various nostalgic visions, ruins continue to remind us of our own transience: they illustrate the perpetual, unexpected, non-linear nature of time. A ruin, by definition, is a building in transition: in the process of disappearing. A void is a place of tension, of both longing and expectation.

Witnessing the decay of the ‘permanent’ object brings us to the notion of the momentary. As the French intellectual Michel Serres notes, time is paradoxical: “it folds or twists; it is as various as the dance of flames in a brazier: here interrupted, there vertical, mobile, and unexpected.”2 In French, the noun for time, le temps, also means the weather: the cyclical and spontaneous essence of time belongs to that of the nature. Whereas the regularity of nature’s successive seasons is continually disturbed by short-term uncertainties, instant events and long-term patterns, the linearity of time as described by the calendar is overlaid with the cyclical changes of the seasons, day and night. Our conception of time is further complicated by our shared perceptions of histories and futures, as well as the very personal sphere of memories and anticipations. Only the objects around us can make the escaping concept of time, for a moment, tangible and perceivable.

The monument, as an archive of indefinitely accumulating time, in juxtaposition with the festival, that is linked to time in its most flowing, transitory and precarious aspect, present the polar ends of the durational spectrum of spatial occupation. Yet, these two opposites approach each other in a curious way. They are, as stated by Foucault, other timescapes, heterochronies “outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages”3, simultaneously abolishing and rediscovering time. Much like ruins and other sites of transience, temporal structures present an architectural process not to be completed, but continued, thus unfolding as a potential catalyst for change.

When an architectural project is concentrated in time, the grandeur of the scenography can reinvent the context by invading the space of memory, drawing here the first lines of cultural and urban renewal. These fleeting moments and images call us to remember. In the words of Kevin Lynch, “art can mediate between the flux of life and our craving for eternity: aesthetic sequences culminate in fitting endings. In more homely experience, we admire the sunset or the autumn season, when day and summer stand quiet at the last.”4 There is a fraction between the premises of architectural preservation and urbanism: whereas an architectural object aims for stillness and duration, a city is in continuous movement – and while the direction of its development may be guided, the outcome is forever uncertain. As the urban is essentially defined by the movement within, and the interrelations of its objects rather than their static form, there is, in fact, no such thing as preservation, and each attempt results in a momentum that cannot be canceled. In the words of Nicolas Bourriaud, “this is why the modern favors the event over monumental order, the ephemeral over an eternity writ in stone; it is a defense of fluidity against omnipresent reification.”5 From an urban point of view, each project of conservation is a radical transformation in disguise.

1 2 3 4

Parry 2017, p. 130.

Serres & Latour 1995, p. 49.

Foucault 1986.

Lynch 1991, p. 39.

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In contrast to the prevalent musealising logic in the management of historic environments, my study looks for strategic ways to integrate the objectives and methods of architectural preservation and socially motivated urban design, while recognising and embracing the transient qualities of space. Emphasising local characteristics, the multiplicity of historical layers, and the power of the collective memory in the production of urban space, this thesis calls out a deeper understanding of the dimension of time in the practice of urban design. I invite architects and urban planners to question, how we – in collaboration with experts in the fields of conservation and archaeology – could cultivate techniques for the preservation of not only the building blocks, but also the local identities and lifeforms housed in their vicinity. Examining the spatial and societal implications of preservative actions, I aim to define operational tools for designing in the dimension of time, addressing the term “ephemeral” as a metaphor of sustainable evolution. Emblematic to ruins and temporary structures, this ‘fourth dimension’ engenders a consciousness of our unique placement in time and space – and perhaps the empathic notion of its coincidental nature.

In my work, the dimensions of history and potential intertwine as crucial factors in investigating urban transformation processes. The reader will not find here a scientific study of the methods of architectural preservation or a “how to” –manual: rather, this book is a historical, philosophical and social inquiry into the processes of preservation and renewal.

Although my work touches on the science and technology of architectural conservation, more importantly it addresses the urban and societal implications of preservative actions, calling into question the premises on which the historical environments are curated within the configuration of the city. According to Manfredo Tafuri, to fully engage with the past, it should be dealt with a critical attitude instead of passive admiration: “This means, also, that architecture helps to clarify a historical situation by charging itself with critical values.”6 My thesis thus takes the form of operative historiography: the “meeting point of history and planning”. Borrowing Tafuri’s terminology, “operative criticism plans past history by projecting it toward the future -- Its attitude is contesting towards the past, and prophetic towards the future.”

This little book was born as a result of my own Roman summer – a gift with an expiration date. Wistfully counting the dwindling days before my departure, I learnt to embrace the beauty in temporary things. My special thanks belong to those, who passed through this liminal state by my side: those who shared with me their fleeting moment in the Roman time and space. I owe my gratitude to the Finnish Institute in Rome for enabling and funding my study in Villa Lante: the networks, archives and facilities of the Finnish Institute, along with those of the American Academy and the British School in Rome, greatly benefited my work. I’d like to thank my devoted advisor Guro Sollid from the Royal Danish Academy for supporting me through the course of my work. Finally, I wish to thank my mentors, who gratuitously lended me their expertise: MAXXI's senior curator Pippo Ciorra who first introduced me to the temporary fluxes of the eternal city, professor Jan Gadeyne from Cornell University, who discussed with me the histories of Rome’s fortifications, and scholar Anni Vartola from Aalto University, who, from afar, guided me through the journey of writing.

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Bourriaud 2009, p. 16 “It might be a somewhat violent operation; but its results will be conditioned by its capacity to bring out from the clash between old and the new the dialectical link between historicity and the permanence of ancient textures and the values of the present, the changeable, the arbitrary, the energetic, typical of contemporary life.” Tafuri 1980a, p. 60-61.

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The ephemeral city – reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

The circuit of the Aurelian Wall and its main directions projected on a modern map of Rome. The thick white line indicates the remaining fragments.

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Introduction

1 Introduction The construction of the Aurelian Wall, fortification of imperial Rome, was in many ways an unparallelled endeavor that dramatically altered the urban identity of the city. First erected in the 3rd century AD, the wall was a prototypical urban feature that morphed the paradigm of the ‘walled city’, a common ancestor of western urban conceptions. As remarkable as the construction of the ancient wall, was the extent of its preservation through the centuries of Rome’s urban development: Its 19-kilometre circuit has been immaculately preserved, repaired and reappropriated to date, while the historical fortifications of most contemporary cities were demolished to make way for the ever-expanding urban sprawl. The Aurelian Wall survived numerous revolutions and dramatic political shifts, and continues to be among the most extensive and well-preserved city walls in the world. Every age has left its mark on the wall in the form of restorations and renewals, reflecting the various incongruities in the history of the city. The alternation of different historical styles, ancient, ecclesial and national symbols, and the endless puzzle of masonry and finishings of various era reveal the complex genesis of the wall – and of the city.

The configuration of modern Rome and its ancient fortification remain intertwined. As the city has grown rapidly in the last century, the Aurelian Wall has been swallowed by the everexpanding urbanity. Today, the wall has come to symbolise not the border of the city, but a divide of another kind: while the locals reside outside the circuit of the old wall, the urban core within the Aurelian Wall has become one of the most popular travel destinations in the world, a spectacular passage designed for passers-by. Only twenty percent of Romans reside in the urban area, while rest live in the city’s periphery. Simultaniously, the main historical sites and nearly all touristic destinations are located within the boundary of the Aurelian Wall. The city is visited by seven million tourists each year – more than twice the number of inhabitants of the metropolis – which may double on holy years.7 Historical tourism is the trademark of the contemporary city of Rome, and most of its famous attractions are in fact archaeological sites, such as the Forum and the Colosseum, drawing a frantic 4 million visitors yearly.

One might say that the function, or orientation, of the ancient city wall is somewhat inverted within the modern restructuring of the city. A similar evolution of the urban paradigm from the compact, fortified city, to a complex network of uninhabited historical centres and surrounding residential peripheries, marks metropolitan areas all around the world. The polarized division of the city of Rome to divergent zones of residential neighbourhoods with their intriguing fault lines and flows of transformation, and the monumental and coulisse-like historical sites preserved for exhibiting the official narrative of the nation’s history to an external audience, is by no means unique. Rather, it provides a prototypical example and precedent of the complex processes of commodifications and re-commodifications of historical environments in an age of urban nostalgia and international tourism.

Romantic and political ruins The city of Rome has a long history as a laboratory for touristic encounters – in fact, Rome was already promoted as a travel destination long before the terms brand, marketing, or tourism were established. The charming scenery had evoked internatonal admiration since the wake of Renaissance, when ancient art and architecture were rediscovered by the European aristocracy.

7

Christiani 2017, p. 22.

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The ephemeral city – reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

Already a religious pilgrimage8, the city became one of the main destinations of the Grand Tour, a popular rite of passage for wealthy, young Englishmen in the 17th century. Although such long travels were not accessible to larger crowds before the 1840’s, the pictoresque views of Rome’s untouched ruins, overgrown by nature, drew admiration beyond borders. The romanticist painters depicted the demise of man-made infrastructure, invaded and overgrown by nature, as a metaphor of both eternity and decay, enchanted by their very transiency, the dialogue between nature and human. Roman relics even inspired the art of the English garden, where fake ruins were constructed as decorative elements in the landscape.

However, the aesthetic ideals captured in these visions were still quite far from the grandiose and solemn image that dominates Rome’s historical infrastructure today. The division of the city to the monumental centre and the residential peripheries, as well as much of the staging of Rome’s ancient architecture, in fact have their origin in the 19th and early 20th century urbanism. As the city, previously ruled by the Pope, became part of the kingdom of Italy in 1870, the ancient artifacts became an emblem of nationalist aspirations. Rome’s promotion to the capital of the newly reunified Italian state made the difficult collision of the fragile historical patrimony and the developing urban paradigms increasingly acute. How could the city’s growing population, industry and the increasing flow of visitors be balanced with the delicate structures that gave Rome its ‘eternal’ appeal?

In the revitalisations of classical aesthetics, which marked urban paradigms across Europe, Rome was for centuries an arena where historical inspiration was unearthed, and where the emerging heritage policies were established and contested. Already in the mid-nineteenth century, Rome had become, in the words of art historian Andreas Tönnesmann, “the grail of those Europeans fleeing modernisation, transforming from a symbol of incessant change into a remnant of a long-lost world, an object of nostalgic admiration”.9 According to a seminal study by the Swedish scholar Marita Jonsson, it was first the excavations in Rome around the year 180010 that strongly influenced the paradigm of a historical “monument” as a pictoresque object – a beautiful thing from the past,11 whose original appearance should be revealed and defended from the tumult of modern urban developments. Protection was gradually extended from the individual monument, to the setting of the monument, to entire quarters and districts, and eventually, to cultural and historic landscapes.12 Naturally the unique abundance of tangible, built remains from antiquity in the city encouraged the situation that Rome was studied predominantly as a historical monument, focusing on its past and its marvelous architectural and artistic heritage. The more its architecture and archaeology was explored, the clearer its uncontested “monumentality” became, shifting the values and objectives of urban design: relics of the past were thus prioritized in relation to the human habitation. The inventive reuse of ancient buildings employed by the former Catholic rulers of the city, as well as the dreamy, romantic visions of abandoned ruins buried under the pasturelands, were exchanged for a deliberate mission of monumental urbanism, exposing 8

9 10

11 12

In the sixteenth century, Pope Sixtus V decided to enhance the image of Rome as a pilgrimage center; this major project was realised in five years by building seven main churches and a new road system to connect them. The brand of Rome, then, has changed little after the times of the Renaissance: the most popular associations of the name Rome are still those of historicity and Christianity. Staiff, Bushell & Watson 2013, p.

10.

Tönnesmann 2010, p. 15-32.

The early excavations were initiated during the short period of French rule from 1808 to 1813 by Napoleon Bonaparte, who had a plan to turn Rome into his second capital. Little of this was realized, but the excavations at the Roman Forum were later continued by pope Pius VII. Wolf 2017, p. 72.

Jonsson 1976.

Stamm 2017, p. 49.

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Introduction

and ‘musealising’ the city’s ancient artifacts. In clearing out the parasitic structures and discarding the additional functions of historical environments, the heritage initiatives of the early Italian state often inhibited the organic interaction between the building and the urban life. Supporting a singular narrative of the city’s history excluded its other fascinating layers.

The ancient structures, elevated into nostalgic emblems of cultural and political cogency, thus reshaped the image of the city, and continue to dominate its urban development.

Contesting modern heritage paradigms Since the 1960’s and particularly during the 1970’s the issues around heritage conservation begun to gain considerable attention worldwide, sparking a vivid discussion among architects and scholars in Italy. A new era of architectural theory was inaugurated with sharp criticism towards the urban conceptions of the modern era, especially its relation to time and historicity in urban environments.13 According to the Italian architectural theorist Manfredo Tafuri, the “non-historicity” of modern architecture from 1800 onwards, and the impossible reconfiguration of urban environments, ”led to the uncontrollable plunder of historical centres, to the silence of architecture towards historical pre-existences, to the inability to see critically the historical environments as meaningful structures”.14 The postmodern era saw a multitude of radical attempts at aversing the classic architectural and urban hierarchies, developing more or less serious architectural solutions to reconcile the fraction between the static historical environments and the rapidly transforming urban dynamics. The reappropriation of historical buildings was rediscovered in the fashion of ancient and medieval builders, enacting new techniques of layering and juxtaposing modern architectural features and parasitic structures upon the the old. Often, these revitalisations were temporary constructions, ephemeral interventions. Thus, they broadened the dimension of time within the enduring urban environments, making them react to contemporary urban challenges by the means of gentle, reversible architectures.

The common definition of the term ephemeral, “which lasts only one day”, originates in the medical lexicon, indicating fevers of short duration, which exhausted the disease. By extension, the term outlines a specific relationship between the project and its duration, often describing such architectural instruments that are consummated in the limited timeframe of the event.

It was from this fleeting experience of beauty, or amazement, that the science of ephemeral urbanism emerged in Italian cities four decades ago. First in the late 70’s the ephemeral was employed as an instrument for radical commentaries, and its ability to amaze was directed at creating new, revolutionary and democratic visions for the city. Due to their experimental, reversible nature, the temporary interventions and reappropriations enabled a speculative design beyond the usual problem-solving of architecture, initiating conversations around possible futures and whether or not they’re desirable, thus reaching from the probable scope of outcomes towards the preferable ones.

Decades later, these critical commentaries and artistic contaminations appear more relevant than ever. We now know that a monument is a social construct – an abstract concept attributed to a material object by a group of people. The attributed values – whether aesthetic, scientific or memorial – serve to justify the conservation, or at least the non-destruction of the object.15 The French architectural historian and theorist Françoise Choay argues that “in its relation 13 14 15

In the words of the French Philosopher Henri Lefebvre, ”manifest expulsion of time” was ”arguably one of the hallmarks of modernity”. Lefebvre 1991, p. 84.

According to Tafuri, ”to give up reconfiguring the city means to give up understanding it critically.” Tafuri 1980a, p. 58.

Stamm 2017, p. 48.

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The ephemeral city – reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

to history, the monument refers to an intellectual construction”.16 However, the relationships that communities form with such cherished historical objects seem to have changed drastically during the modern era: the tools and methods of organic reuse of the old have been forgotten.

As stated by Michele Lamprakos, “we seem to have lost the ability to creatively engage with the past: we either demolish historic areas, or we freeze them in time.”17 Monumental visions in contemporary Rome Today, historical cities are the object of elaborate protection policies aimed at preserving, in whole or in part, their historical character. This process has reached its peak as these sites have become icons of global cultural tourism: increasingly, they are also objects of great economic interest. The application of symbolic meanings to material artifacts is thus no longer predominantly produced by, or communicated to, the local community. Ever more often, it is presented for an external audience. The conservation of the historical urban fabric is now a specialized professional field reserved for a specific sector of our cities. If this has favored, on the one hand, the development of theory and professional practice, on the other it has separated the field of urban conservation from the management of urbanisation processes. 18 The framing of monuments and historical districts increasingly emphasises the importance of the narrative, the environment being viewed not as a continuation of the urban commons, or a functioning, vibrant part of the city, but as a museum object, a source of historical information – either scientific or entertaining. In Rome, the increasing flow of visitors has forced the city to protect the stripped and excavated monuments by framing the large archaeological parks as fenced and enclosed sections in the heart of the city. This approach is advocated by the industries of tourism as well as the institutions dedicated to archaeology and built heritage, both contributing to an arguably alienating perspective of the urban. During the last decades there has been a growing awareness among specialists that such a strategy needs to be redefined to open a path to a truly integrated conception of urban design – one that could harmonize the conservation of what is defined historical and the management of urban development and urban recovery processes.19 Thus, beside the meticulously staged and isolated emblems of the past, one is enchanted by the occasional encounter with the crumbling, natural ruinscapes scattered around the city, and the vital historical buildings, that still continue to serve urban life, surrendering to the daily routines of the locals. The architecture that has maintained its role as part of the configuration of the city has often endured radical transformations – as, for example, during the Middle Ages when Rome’s pagan temples, amphitheatres, fight arenas and sanctums of fleshly pleasures were turned into ecclesial sites. Sometimes the polar change of a building’s use has been deliberate, imposing political or religious values into the built environment – sometimes more organic: for example, when the relics of administrative or military infrastructure have been employed as cultural or residential spaces. Utilitarianism and urgency have often led to total reappropriations with no scruples, resulting in vigorous contaminations.

In Rome, ruins have often acted as a mediator between the contradicting urbanities of the ’monumental city’ and the simultaneously flourishing, informal ’self-made city’. One such hybrid monument is the Aurelian Wall. Since the wall was stripped of its military function in 1870, it has developed various additional programmes, housing residential buildings, studios 16 17 18 19

Thus, monuments are physical nodes connected to the “abstract value of knowing”. Choay 2010.

Lamprakos 2014, p. 10.

Bandarin & van Oers 2012, p. XXII. Bandarin & van Oers 2012, p. XXII.

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Introduction

and warehouses within its robust frame. The body of the wall has been perforated by numerous underpasses to make way for modern urban developments – yet, most of its circuit has been preserved and incorporated into the infrastructure of the city. Unlike many other significant monuments of antiquity, the Aurelian Wall remains a curiously uncultivated object, seamlessly attached to the street grid, bracing residential buildings of all ages and often bordering the busy highways that circle around the city. While the fortification still divides many areas as a concrete obstacle, the fabric of the wall itself synthesises countless different layers of reuse and repair, illustrating the varying premises of urban renewal during the last centuries. With each new iteration the fabric of the old wall and the urban elements in its vicinity have been altered, but the previous strata have continued to exist alongside the new.

Already struggling to maintain its countless treasures of ancient architecture, the city council has done little to polish the wall’s historical image. Some of the wall’s gates, however, are already exhibited as museum objects: the towers and interiors adjacent to them appear permanently closed, and even the surrounding site may be fenced off from visitors. In fact, the only gate buildings still in use are the ones now employed as museums – The military archive of Museo Storico dei Bersaglieri in Porta Pia, the Museo delle Mura in Porta Sebastiano, and finally the Museo della Via Ostiense in Porta San Paolo which, much like the former, only exhibits a small collection related to military history. These attractions serve as the rare examples of efforts to develop the Aurelian Wall into a ‘heritage site’ or tourist drawcard.

There have, however, been some recent initiatives – few of them realised, others still under construction – for the wall’s conservation, where its ‘original’, solemn appearance has been emphasised and purged of ‘unnecessary’ additions. Unfortunately, regaining its ancient glory has not made the wall an inviting place for locals or tourists: standing as a monumental, largely impermeable barrier, the rampart remains a rejective object with little to adhere to. Saturated with notions of power, tranquility and a certain timelessness, these renovation projects have been committed to one version of heritage: the 20th century renovations, the added ‘human’ histories, the innovative and messy reappropriations and parasitic additions of the wall, or the scarcity that often lead to such interventions, do not rate a mention.

The outset of the thesis Whereas this introduction and the preceeding foreword provided a cursory walkthrough of the themes of my thesis and the point of view for my study, the remainder of this book will proceed somewhat chronologically, mapping the modern layers of preservation and revitalisation of historical environments in the context of Rome and the Aurelian Wall. The study explores first the origins of Rome’s current, monumental cityscape, explaining the politically inclined archaeological projects undertaken in the late 19th and early 20th century. After a brief detour to the global and local trends in the preservation, demolition and development of historical city walls, my work delves into evaluating contemporary heritage paradigms, spotting their shortcomings in urban management. This is continued by the search alternative models for the design of historical environments by the means of temporal architectures, innovative reappropriations, spatial stratification and time-sensitive design. By mapping the various historical layers of the Aurelian Wall and its urban context, and by evaluating the principles of past and current efforts at revitalising Rome’s historical environments, I outline a method for embracing both the enduring and the ephemeral qualities of urbanity.

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The ephemeral city – reframing the ruins of the Aurelian Wall

Divided into five main chapters, the remainder of the thesis is structured as follows. The second chapter, The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome gives an introduction to the background of Rome’s monumental cityscape, departing from the ancient origins of the fortified city. The second part of this chapter is dedicated to the forceful heritage management in Italy from the country’s unification through the reign of Mussolini. During this era, Rome’s ancient image was re-established with the all-encompassing urban projects and large archaeological excavations that continue to dominate Rome’s cityscape today, strongly conditioning the way in which the urban historicity is experienced.

The third chapter, Ancient walls in the modern era, delves into the paradigm of the city wall, exploring the curious ways in which this historical typology has been conceived in modern urban science. The first section discusses the fortifications’ difficult collision with modern urban ideals, explaining their decline and demolition in many historical cities around the world, while addressing the lasting effect that these historical elements may still have in the cities’ configuration. I investigate the urban conditions, but also the symbolic connotations, that led to the deprecation of this militant architectural typology. The second part of the chapter focuses on the Aurelian Wall, mapping the various ways in which it has been reappropriated in the modern configuration of the city.

The fourth chapter, Rome interrupted – reclaiming the city, discusses the emerging heritage policies in the second part of the 20th century, as the architects of Italy took a stance against the strict division of the modern and the historical within the city. The modern myths of antiquity were contested in several seminal books, marking a turn in architectural theory: urban and historical sciences were synthesised in a way that remains relevant for the problematic fragmentation of historical cities today. The revolutionary ideals came to life in striking temporary architectures across Italy, as social and cultural projects were joined together in the endeavour of “immaterial urbanism”.

After these diverse historical passages in the development of the heritage paradigm, the fifth chapter, Controversies in conservation lays out the contemporary problems of preservation in urban environments. The first section looks into the commodification of the historical relics: the historical sites of Rome, many of which were established primarily for political premises, are now embedded with the growing business of international tourism. The chapter discusses the social consequences of heritage tourism, and the philosophical implications of the mediated artistic or architectural experiences. The chapter continues with a consideration of the theoretical and practical problems in the preservation of ruinscapes, introducing the recent efforts in the conservation of the Aurelian Wall.

The final, sixth chapter, entitled Spaces of possibility, concludes these considerations. It analyses the spatial potential of historical infrastructure, contemplating on the temporal programmes of historical buildings as a testing ground for urban change. Drawing inspiration from ancient techniques of reusing old buildings and materials, as well as the postmodern ephemeral fevers, the chapter speculates on the methods of reappropriating historical structures and superimposing spatial programmes. Temporal architectures are thus presented as a way to accommodate the changing needs of local communities, constructing agile microdemocracies upon the existing infrastructure and unfolding new layers of the familiar environment.

The thesis synthesizes material from many fields. Most important literary references in my work were the classics of Italy’s postwar architectural theory, which discuss the historical layers of the city: Manfredo Tafuri’s Theories and History of Architecture (1980a) and Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the City (1982a). The work was further influenced by other powerful voices in the postmodern Italian scene – Bruno Zevi, Vittorio Gregotti and Leonardo Benevolo – and especially the architects of Estate Romana, including Franco Purini and the festival’s father

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Introduction

Renato Nicolini. Federica Fava’s Estate romana. Tempi e pratiche della città effimera (2017) was a great introduction to the history and influence of the event. These references were supplemented by important architectural theory related to the topic of time within the built environment, such as the writings of Kevin Lynch, Roberto Venturi and Juhani Pallasmaa.

These considerations were extended with more philosophical literature: Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1969), Sigfried Giedions Space, Time and Architecture – the Growth of a New Tradition (1962), Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity (2000), Henri Lefebvre´s The Production of Space (1991), Michel Foucault´s Of Other Spaces (1986) and Nicolas Bourriaud´s The Radicant (2009) among others.

Essential historical references related to the construction of the Aurelian Wall and its early development were Ian Richmond’s The City Wall of Imperial Rome (1930) and Hendrik Dey’s The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome AD 271-855 (2011). A special emphasis was on the accounts of Rome’s modern history and the literature that reflects on the configuration of the contemporary city in relation to its historical artifacts, such as David Watkin’s The Roman Forum and the articles published in the edited collections History takes place: Rome – dynamics of urban change (2009) and Architecture as propaganda in twentiethcentury totalitarian regimes. History and heritage (2018). These discussions were completed with a recourse to urban sociology: the cited studies on heritage tourism and the commodification of historical environments include the edited volume Heritage and Tourism – Place, encounter, engagement (2013) and Russel Staiff ’s Re-imagining Heritage Interpretation (2014). The material processes of ruination and the practical and theoretical problems in the preservation of ruins were best represented in Tuija Lind’s dissertation Rauniot – Arvoja ja tekoja (2017).

(right) A private house built atop the wall: The wall’s arches border the terraces of the garden. (under) Local youngsters spending time by the wall in Testaccio.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

View above the Aurelian Wall in the southern end of the circuit. Bordered by green villas, here one can still experience the wall in greenbelt as it was originally built.

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The evolution of the fortified city

2 The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome 2.1 The evolution of the fortified city The history of the Aurelian Wall reaches back to the 3rd century AD. The construction of the wall, ordered by the Emperor Aurelian and designed by experienced military architects, began in 271 as the intensified threat from Germanic tribes near the borders of the Roman Empire engendered the need for reinforced defenses against possible invaders.20 The project was completed ten years later by Aurelian’s successor Probus. Unlike the earlier, modest town walls, the circuit of the Aurelian wall reached far beyond the city’s densely populated core, encircling the greenlands around the bustling centre in an immense 19-kilometre circuit. With the construction of the Aurelian Wall the formerly divergent borders of the military border of Servian Wall, the customs and tax border, and the sacral border of pomerium were finally aligned.21 The wall had 16 gates spanning major roads out of the city, and a similar number of smaller posterns over secondary routes.22 The initial structure varied from 3,5 to 4 metres in width – the wall proper narrowing slightly upwards from its foundations – with an average height of seven to eight metres. The wall was further reinforced by 380 square towers, standing about 30 metres apart and assembled due to the strategic principles outlined by Vitruvius some centuries earlier23. As in other cities, the fortification zone required extensive landscaping beyond the mere structure of the wall. Apart from some areas around the gates, an elevated rampart was created on the inside of the wall. The lowered open fire zone, glacis, on the outside had to be cleared by fifty to one hundred metres.

While Romans were famous for their rationalised planning of cities all around the empire, their own capital was a spontaniously composed, haphazard mix of spectacular monuments, large private estates and technically advanced installations like aqueducts and sewers inserted in a cluttered mass of steep private tenements and narrow, unplanned streets cutting through the dense neighbourhoods.24 The lack of coherent urban planning and failure in controlling the growth of the capital were grounded in the public’s understandable disdain for the reorganisation of their modest residences, as well as the generally short-sighted “bread and play” politics employed by Roman emperors. Furthermore, every large public work was complicated by the legal favoring of private property to civic domain: public authorities could only obtain private land on the open market. 25 Against this background, it is remarkable how quickly the emperor Aurelian – triggered by the attacks of the Juthungi and the Vandals in the north, and the bloody revolts of Roman mint workers – managed to build a new wall around the expanded city. While favouring the green villas already in the possession of the state, planners of the wall did not hesitate to truncate or destroy even large and opulent structures belonging to the imperial patrimony – such as the Domus Lateranorum and the Sessorian Palace – to make way for the new wall. Elsewhere, pre-existing structures were not demolished, but curiously incorporated into the fabric of 20 21 22 23 24 25

Dey 2011, p. 72.

Dey 2011, p. 81-84.

Dey 2011, p. 13.

Vitruvius 1999, p. 27-30.

Labuhn 2017, p. 204-205.

Labuhn 2017, p. 205.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

the structure.26 Some of the most notable buildings incorporated to the circuit of the wall are Amphitheatrum Castrense, the Castra Praetoria, Hadrian’s massive mausoleum by the river, and numerous other tombs such as the striking pyramid of Gaius Cestius. In some instances, this overlap allowed the builders to save time, labor and materials, while the more complex trappings may have been an attempt to preserve and integrate chosen monuments into the wall and to secure the grounds in the wall’s vicinity27. The final configuration of the wall, in the words of historian Beata Labuhn, was “the result of a complicated process of military, political, economic, and technical considerations, but it was principally guided by the pragmatic ‘law of least resistance’.”28 Morphologically the wall presents two very different structural typologies. The majority of the nineteen-kilometre circuit was built as a rampart, strategically utilising the natural topography to create a steep barrier between the heightened ground level on the inner side of the wall and the lower ditch on the outside. From above, the fortifications were easier to defend, requiring only a simple solid structure for the wall. Significant variations did occur – especially within the stretches built on even ground, which required a more elaborate structure for both supporting and guarding the wall. Here, the wall appears as something of a continuous, protean building rather than a mere rampart, presenting advanced spatial configurations within its robust frame.

A brick-vaulted staircase inside the tower would lead to an internal walkway rising from the wall’s solid foundations: open at the rear, and covered with an arched gallery.

The wall was originally constructed of brick-faced tufa concrete with some travertine and other natural stones as corner blocks. Building materials were often reused– a large part of the bricks and stones used for both the initial construction and reparations of the wall were collected from demolished buildings nearby. The towers and porticos on the inner side of the wall were vaulted in brick, and the inner load-bearing arches in travertine. Decorative lists and main gates were sometimes enhanced with reused marble elements. Even some recognisable spolia29, repurposed decorative stones with ornamentation, inscription or sculpture parts can be found along the wall. Much of the masonry was renewed in the centuries to come, and the varying patches of stonework gives ques to the different conservation phases of the wall.

The urban role of the imperial wall Contrary to common belief, the new wall did not mark the end of Rome’s urban area dividing the city to the ‘dynamic’ inside and ‘peripheral’ outside zones – instead, the gates became important urban nodes, where citizens met for trade and gatherings. Because of the high accessibility and the spatial and financial freedom outside the customs border, the areas just outside the gates became buzzling marketplaces. The cleared areas in the wall’s vicinity developed into sites of increased urban dynamics, where the norms and regulations administered by the city no longer applied. New, often temporary, structures emerged, and typologies and services that were not allowed within the walls, such as hospitals, brothels, cemeteries and Christian temples, sprung up among the suburban recreational villas and travelers’ hotels.30 26 27

28 29

30

According to a popular estimate made by the Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, one sixth of the wall’s circuit was composed of pre-existing buildings. Lanciani 1892, p. 106.

It is argued that the planners of the wall made an effort to run the circuit through imperial or rural land whenever possible, to avoid the cost of compensation for landowners if the wall should pass through private property. Dey 2011, p. 74-76.

Labuhn 2017, p. 205.

Spolia is a latin word for the repurposing of building stones. A common element in the construction and decoration of old buildings, repurposed building stones were used for new constructions, and decorative sculptures assimilated into new monuments.

Labuhn 2017, p. 205.

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The evolution of the fortified city

Patches of stonework from various era. Much of the original structure was built in opus vittatum, where horizontal rows of brickwork alternated with rectangular tufa blocks. Among them one can find many reused, carved stones or marble parts, and trace the facades of ancient buildings incorporated into the wall.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

The tomb of Caius Cestius (built c. 12 BC) was curiously incorporated into the circuit of Aurelian’s wall.

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The evolution of the fortified city

Like many other city fortifications, the Aurelian Wall was due to ongoing refurbishments to adjust the defense line to the increased requirements of progressing war technology.31 During the ensuing centuries of imperial rule a few principal phases of additions and repairs were made to the structure of the wall, which can still be identified in its existent remains. In the major renovations carried through by emperor Honorius in the 5th century, another storey was added to the circuit, doubling the height of the ridge to 16 metres. Substantial modifications were made to many of the principal gates, and a number of smaller posterns were permanently blocked. As a result of Honorius’ building campaign the wall reached the peak of its size and architectural elaboration, taking on the basic contours it would preserve through the Middle Ages and beyond.

The immense scale and elaborate construction of the fortifications, as well as the demolition and alteration of so many other monuments in favour of the wall, testify of the project’s significance for the late empire. The Aurelian wall was, in both practical and conceptual terms, an unparalleled endeavor. Although the political and strategic military dynamics of the ancient capital cannot be overlooked, ‘defense’, as the preferred motive for the wall’s construction, perhaps provides only a partial explanation. The city was in many respects a world unto itself, maintained by a vast influx of supplies, money and migrants, fuelling above all the symbolic and ideological production of the Roman empire.32 Thus, the internal politics and administration of a city maintained by over a million hungry, chronically unemployed residents played a significant role in the construction of its formidable walls.33 Being one of the first defensive structures of such grand scale in Europe, the Aurelian Wall had a significant impact not only on the urban configuration of Rome, but also the design of the empire’s numerous colonial cities. Following the example of Rome, a widespread spate of wall-building emerged during the later third, fourth and fifth centuries, that culminated in an empire-wide revamping of classical urban paradigms. As a result of their proliferation, in the words of the historian Hendrik Dey, “circuit walls came to be considered essential urban features, to the point that cities would ultimately be defined as such on the basis of whether or not they were provided with such an enceinte.”34 Several literary sources from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages testify of their importance, portraying the presence and appearance of the fortifications as a token of the prosperity of a city. Where it once was forums, baths and theaters that represented the essence of urban design across the Roman Empire, it was now the walls that did so. In fact the Latin word moenia, a term that once meant “circuit walls” alone, became a metonym for “public buildings”, the essence of the city as a whole.35 The fall of the Roman Empire and the afterlife of the Aurelian Wall Although by the beginning of the 4th century Rome was deprived of its traditional role of administrative capital of the Empire, it was still considered the most beautiful and sacred city of the Western world. Rome began to live on its glorious past, and the efforts in public planning focused on the preservation of the cityscape rather than urban development. For instance, imperial edicts from AD 364, 376 and 390 prohibited the reuse of materials from old monuments for new building projects.36 Yet, the rulers of Rome, were not able to prevent 31 32 33 34 35 36

Labuhn 2017, p. 205.

Dey 2011, p. 110.

Textual sources point at several occasions of unrest within the city before the wall’s construction, as worers, arguably supported by members of the senate, revolted against the emperor’s rule. See Dey 2011.

Dey 2011, p. 131.

Dey 2011, p. 131.

Labuhn 2017, p. 207.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

the city’s decline. Rome’s mighty fortifications failed to stop the barbarians, and in 410 the city was pillaged by the Visigoths. This disaster was followed by earthquakes, further invasions and domestic vandalism, leaving the city in ruins.37 Yet, the Aurelian Wall – the point of break of the ancient superpower – enfolded the city for thousands of years to come. The cult of Rome survived in its ruins, and as the Catholic popes took over the management of the city in the 6th century, they undertook the conservation of the “sacred” ancient monuments by reappropriating them into ecclesial use. The contours and functions of the Aurelian Wall remained relatively unchanged, even cherished, as the wall of Papal Rome became symbolically affiliated to that of Jerusalem.38 Many ot her constructions were either dramatically conversed or dismantled – at least for their outer shell and marble cladding – to be used as building blocks or burnt in lime kilns. The salvation of the wall, of course, was not entirely due to its exceptional authority and utility: apart from its ceremonial gates, the Aurelian Wall was a robust and pragmatic structure with little to plunder.

The Aurelian Wall was one of the rare building typologies to be seamlessly incorporated from the ancient capital to the papal town. The fortifications of the Aurelian Wall were restored, but few changes were made to their original design. However, the walls of Gianicolo on the other side of the river Tiber were rebuilt during the early Middle Ages to meet the needs of Rome’s new administrative center, the Vatican. A tunnel was incorporated within the new wall, leading from the Vatican all the way to Castel Sant’Angelo, cylindrical catholic fortress built upon the ancient tomb of Hadrian. Through the hidden passageway, ‘passetto’, the pope could quickly escape the possible invaders to the stronghold of Sant’Angelo.

With the fragmentation of the former Roman Empire and the diffusion of Christianity during the Middle Ages, the typology of the wall began to spread.39 The model of the Aurelian Wall, as a prototypical urban feature, was introduced to Christian cities all across the Western hemisphere. Morphing the urban paradigm, a fortification became essential, if not synonymous with the concept of a city. The Aurelian Wall, once constructed as a pragmatic military defence in an impulsive show of force, thus developed into an iconic construction imitated in numerous medieval cities.40 The symbolic value designated to it, in part, contributed to its preservation, while the population, authority and affluence of Rome continued to decrease.

Suffering damages in the numerous battles and sieges of Rome, the Aurelian W all was continuously repaired and its features updated, adopting many Christian symbols and decorations. In the 9th century, the modest wooden towers were replaced by stone-built ones, giving the wall the occasional medieval aesthetic still recognisable today. The l ist of repairs and refurbishments carried out by the Popes continued uninterruptedly until the nineteenth century, and they can still be traced in the material stratification of the wall. Although the wall did not give the city absolute immunity, it kept Rome together, and preserved its integrity and continuity through the centuries of unrest: It provided the damaged city a shelter behind which it could recover from the storms that from time to time swept over it. The Aurelian Wall continued to serve as a military defence up until 1870 and was carefully upkept through ongoing restorations, thus surviving in decent condition through thousands of years.

37 38 39 40

Labuhn 2017, p. 207.

Labuhn 2017, p. 208.

Dey 2011, p. 155, 158.

Dey 2011, p. 122.

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The evolution of the fortified city

Porta Maggiore is one of the eastern gates of the wall. The evocative ruin is in fact centuries older than the wall itself: an example of architectural recycling, it was originally built as a decorative addition to the aqueducts.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

Reassembled pilars at the Roman Forum. Behind is the pompous administrative centre built by Mussolini, Altare della Partia (Altar of the Fatherland).

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Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state

2.2 Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state The history of Rome, since its inception, has been marked by the dramatic rotation of ascents and declines. According to Kevin Lynch, this alternation is, in fact, crucial to the preservation of historical monuments. “Environments rich in historic remains often follow a particular pattern: once markedly prosperous, they then suffered a rapid economic decline and remained stagnant for long periods, though continuing to be occupied and at least partially maintained. -This stagnation must then be followed by a second period of wealth (whether belonging to the region itself or brought in by visitors) that can bear the costs of preservation.”41 Although Lynch here refers to the remains of 19th century England, the same sequence of pulsating procession – albeit ten times longer – is what has saved so much of the historical city, or cities, under the name Rome. The city’s ancient heritage was forgotten and reinvented many times over. After its vast decline during the Middle Ages, Roman architecture and art was again upgraded in the Papal revitalisations of the city’s monuments between 1450-1650. As the remediated virtu of the ancient capital inspired eclectic reappropriations in Renaissance and Baroque architecture, Rome regained its splendor as the center of the cultural world – only to lose it again towards the end of the 19th century.

When the Italian troops invaded the Papal state of Rome in September 1870,42 the city was not quite ready to undertake the role of a modern metropolis. Having been ruled by the Vatican for centuries, Rome was a drowsy city of only two hundred thousand inhabitants, where villas and noble palaces were scattered with ancient relics, convents, vegetable patches, vineyards and gardens. While the ancient centre of the city had been coated with layers of medieval, renaissance and baroque architecture, further within the Aurelian Walls a visitor could wander for miles without encountering people or their habitations.

Unaware of the industrial ferment that had taken over other European capitals, Rome lived mostly on an agricultural economy. The picturesque countryside that surrounded the centre was interspersed with ancient remains, many of them buried under the pasturelands.

Most remains of antiquity were covered partly or completely by further strata of historical infrastructure. While some prestigious monuments, such as the Pantheon and the Colosseum, had been preserved and transformed into religious sites, many buildings had been dismantled and reused as building blocks or decorative features in later architecture. In stark contrast to the contemporary archaeolgical layout of Rome, the cityscape was defined by an organic, layered composition, apart from the few excavations carried out in the centre of the city during the early 19th century.

Soon after the Italian unification, massive urban projects were initiated to elevate the image of the city. Eager to launch a collective national identity, the young state found its paragon in antiquity – the previous era of cultural and political unity on the Italian peninsula. The embellishment of a modern city worthy of its glorious past required the construction of theaters, museums and public buildings, restorations of its old churches and palaces, and the landscaping of gardens. The identity of the capital was expressed through a glorifying and solemn architecture. During the next decades the previous farmlands, as well as many of the residential quarters, were turned into a continuous site of building projects and archaeological excavations. A large campaign was launched to reveal the immense monumental inheritance of 41 42

Lynch 1972, p. 30.

In September 1870 the Italian army marched into the Papal state of Rome in the epochal breach of the gate Porta Pia: once again, the Aurelian Wall was at the center of a revolution. The Italian government assumed power from the Vatican, and Rome became the new capital of Italy in 1871.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

Ancient Rome. Huge squares and avenues opened to reveal grandiose views towards the most important historical monuments and the new administrative palaces.43 The urban reforms were performed at a frenetic speed. The former peasants from the countryside moved to the city to work for construction – industrial development was perceived as a possible source for social conflict, and the building industry was for decades the only business thriving in Rome. 44 The clergy and the aristocrats sold their land as the arriving middle class took lead in construction, and the farmers were employed as masons. The parks of the patrician villas that surrounded the city from Piazza del Popolo to San Giovanni as a green belt – all apart from Villa Borghese – were sold and built up. Numerous monasteries, palaces, villas and gardens vanished under bricks and mortar. New roads were cut through the center of the city, demolishing old neighbourhoods. In the process, the remains of ancient Rome were stumbled upon by accident, and dug up unsystematically with no proper record.45 Following the example of many previous foreign and religious governers, the new monarchs took advantage of the opportunities provided by these discoveries, legitimising their rule by restoring ancient Roman monuments.

Many of the archaeological sites that now dominate the center of the city were first unearthed and established during this era, including the Roman Forum, parts of the Colosseum, and the area from Palatine hill to the baths of Caracalla.46 Many of the excavations were hastily done, causing irrevocable damage to historical artifacts. The handsome church of Santa Maria Liberatrice from the 17th century was blown up with dynamite in order to uncover the remains of the older Santa Maria Antiqua. Not only destroying the church, this violent makeover also led to the steady deterioration of the ancient frescoes revealed, as they were left exposed to the open air. From 1900 the scenic row of old houses which ran west towards the Curia from the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina was demolished in the hope of revealing something of the Basilica Aemilia. However, the resulting site was a barren mess with nothing to see. 47 Although methods and guidelines of architectural preservation were still in their infancy, the unnecessary and tendentious archaeological establishments prompted many critical commentaries from their contemporaries. In the words of the English writer and raconteur Augustus Hare: “Thirty years of Sardinian rule — 1870-1900 — have done more for the destruction of Rome than all the invasions of the Goths and Vandals. If the Government, the Municipality, and, it must be confessed, the Roman aristocracy, had been united together since 1870, with the sole object of annihilating the beauty and interest of Rome, they could not have done it more effectually. The old charm is gone for ever, the whole aspect of the city is changed… the pagan ruins have been denuded of all that gave them picturesqueness and beauty.”48 The Fascist rule and the new ancient capital While the rest of Europe sought to abandon the classical models in the wake of modernism, Italy continued to look into its past for stylistic reference. The legacy of the patrimony was given an increasingly central role in the Italian society as Benito Mussolini rose to power in the 1920’s. He used archaeology as a means to foreground and legitimise fascist imperial ambitions 43 44 45 46 47 48

Guttry 2001, p. 9.

Guttry 2001, p. 10.

Watkin 2009, p. 196.

Guttry 2009, p. 22.

Watkin 2009, p. 203.

Hare 1900.

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Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state

Vast clearances surround the main historical sites of Rome. By placing them in isolation, their monumental and solemn appearance was enhanced.

abroad and, domestically, to justify the debunkment of democratic government by totalitarian rule. Fascist politics was then presented as a return to the style of government that had given Rome its greatness.49 As proof of the unique virtuosity of the ancient Romans, whose successors they avidly claimed to be, the Fascists aggressively reassembled the urban fabric to showcase the glories of antiquity.

Classical Rome was to be dusted off and, if necessary, rebuilt as a backdrop for Mussolini’s public appearances, parades and performances50. In order to underline the continuity between the new Imperial Rome of the regime and the ancient Rome of the Caesars, new archaeological excavations were introduced, discovering grand and evocative remains, but wiping out entire neighborhoods from the Baroque, Renaissance and medieval eras. The urban layers that did not support Fascists’ cultural narrative and aesthetic, such as the vernacular neighbourhoods of the old centre with their narrow, criss-crossing pedestrian streets, were razed away in the dramatic demolitions and infrastructural interventions that made way for grand boulevards, new pompous monuments like that dedicated to Victor Emanuel II, and other trappings thought fit for a great modern capital.

Grand streets, axially aligned on the chosen monuments, provided theatrical space for the performance of the fascist ritual, crucial to the regime’s popular acceptance. The parades and celebrations fully utilized the scenery provided by the recently excavated Roman remains.51 The wide avenues were built right beside – and at times atop – the most important archaeological sites. Massive demolition concerned even the newly revealed relics of the Imperial Forum, as 49 50

Higgins 2018, p. 291.

Higgins 2018, p. 290.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

(above) In the archaeological centre of Rome one often stumbles upon desert areas consisting only of broad highways and impenetrable fences. (left) Urban planning and infrastructural developments were determined by car traffic. An old gate of the Aurelian Wall.

more51than three quarters of what had been excavated was again buried for the construction of the grand Via dell’Impero, an immense urban highway, causing enormous destruction to the forums of Nerva and Trajan.52 Building the road now known as Via dei fori Imperiali, 40 000 square meters of one of the most historic parts of medieval and Renaissance Rome was destroyed, including five churches and dozens of residential buildings. One of the most ambitious engineering projects—the construction of massive retaining walls to tame the floodprone Tiber—sank the river by dozens of feet and resulted in its loss as a real presence in the cityscape.53 Another major loss spearheaded by Mussolini was the clearing of a swath of structures in the Vatican Borgo to make a new, wide avenue Via della Consolazione, leading from the Castel Sant’Angelo up to St. Peter’s Basilica. While the demolition opened a scenographic and much photographed view from the river toward the basilica, many argue that it destroyed the original, ceremonial entrance into the square of St. Peters. Bordered by residential quarters, the journey towards the church had been a very different experience as pilgrims and visitors would wander their way through the shadowy, narrow streets to suddenly arrive in the celestial light of the basilica. Today, the view is framed from far away — the element of surprise, as well as a notable slice of Rome’s historical centre, was sacrificed to a scenic vista.54 51 52 53 54

Higgins 2018, p. 290.

Watkin 2009, p. 207.

Stanford Libraries, Images of Rome.

Stanford Libraries, Images of Rome.

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Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state

Architecture of oppression The early-modern reconfigurations of the city, that have dominated Rome’s image to date, were the result of the Fascist’s self-proclaimed programme of de-ubanisation. A “diluted expansion of territory” was proclaimed out from the historical centre. In the nation-wide revamping of urban paradigms, large building projects were initiated in the outskirts of the city, or in the countryside villages. Similar developments, of course, were conducted throughout the Western world in the name of modernism and urban hygiene, but in Italy the authorities had additional motives, as the densely populated urban sprawl was potentially dangerous breeding ground for revolutionary movements. The capital was instead developed as an arena for a fascist tour de force with its scenic monuments and administrative palaces. Illustrating the Fascist’s urban conceptions, in the early 1940’s the architect Gustavo Giovannoni speculated the destruction of war as an opportunity to eliminate the modern extensions of monuments, whereas Armando Melis proposed “active evacuation” as a useful tool for the execution of the new deurbanisation policy.55 Slowly transforming from the remote border of the city to a rather centrally located urban feature, the Aurelian Wall was swallowed by the city’s expansion as the population of metropolitan Rome continued to increase and spread out.56 Having once guarded and defended the inhabitants of the city, the Wall developed into a symbolic divide of a different kind, a social border between the monumental centre and the ever-growing suburbs. As the displaced inhabitants of the destroyed houses moved to the outskirts of the city, the borgate – peripheral suburbs – were rapidly built to receive them and were, from the start, sadly renowned for their poor living standars.57 The centre, in the meantime, was staged to exhibit the ancient artifacts cherished by the patrimony. Ancient columns were rebuilt and even whole buildings reconstructed, such as the Roman Curia in the Forum.58 Mussolini himself declared in 1925, that his aim was to “liberate the trunks of the great oak from everything that still smothers it. Everything that grew there in the centuries of decadence must be swept away.”59 Thus, an empty space was created around the Temple of Vesta, Largo di Torre Argentina, the Theatre of Marcello and the Ara Qoeli square.

60 ‘Rome must appear in all its splendour”, he stated, ”immense, ordered, and powerful as it was at the time of the first empire, that of Augustus.’61 Mussolini wanted to frame monuments, such the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Pantheon and even the Trevi fountain, with vast, empty squares, stating that the canonised artifacts of Roman history must “stand out in isolation as giants”.62 The crumbling remains of ancient Rome inspired authoritarian rulers beyond borders, perhaps most notably Adolf Hitler. During his visit he was taken on a tour of Rome’s ancient monuments, many of which had been especially manicured for the occasion.63 Fascinated by 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Giannantonio 2018, p. 110.

Since Rome was named capital in 1870, the size of Rome had doubled every 30 years, and from half a million inhabitants at the beginning of the century the population reached one million in the 1930’s. Guttry 2001, p.

25.

Guttry 2001, p. 48.

Higgins 2018, p. 290.

Watkin 2009, p. 206.

Guttry 2001, p. 47.

Watkin 2009, p. 206.

Watkin 2009, p. 208.

Higgins 2018, p. 291.

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The wall and the city – constructing the cult of Rome

the architecture of the Colosseum, as he was meditating on plans of the new Congress Hall at Nuremberg, Hitler decided that the public buildings of the National Socialist regime should no longer be built of steel and reinforced concrete, but of the marble, stone and brick that he admired in the Roman remains.64 In his nostalgic vision, the monuments built in these robust materials would communicate the nation’s ‘heroic aspirations’ for generations to come, and gave the order to erect the important buildings of his Reich in keeping with this “law of ruins”.65 Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer developed the discourse further in his Theorie von Ruinenwert, “Theory of Ruin Value”, stating that “by using special materials and by applying certain principles of statistics, we should be able to build structures which even in a state of decay, after hundreds or thousands of years, would more or less resemble Roman models.”66 Illustrating this idea, the future plans were imagined not only in their completed, but also their delipitated state, constucting romantic views of the Nazi monuments “after generations of neglect, over-grown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outlines still clearly recognisable.”

Monuments of lost significance The fascination that the European dictators displayed for the degenerated remains of these ‘monuments of lost significance’67 may seem counterintuitive. Ruins are still perceived as symbols of the vanity of power – and the very real human suffering inherently connected to it. From Aleppo to Detroit, images of ruins continue to illustrate contemporary stories of decay and destruction. However, there are numerous theories of ruins, all of which overlap to some extent, making some kind of claim to politicised melancholy, but which all point in very different ideological directions. The leaders of totalitarian regimes conceptualised ruins as glorious, ‘eternal’ markers of teir glory, a witness and message for generations to come. Others imply, in the words of Jean Starobinski, that the melancholic ruin “indicates an abandoned cult, a forsaken god”68. They evoke a powerful sensation of nostalgia, a sense of loss – in the words of Denis Diderot: “we only remain of a whole nation that is no more. Here is the first line of the poetics of the ruins.”69 The authoritarian regimes crumbled, but indeed left a persistent architectural heritage. The urban and archaeological endeavors of the Fascists, along with the earlier interventions of the young Italian state, still dominate the layout of Rome. It is particularly insidious how Mussolini’s interventions have conditioned the way we see and experience both the historical monuments themselves and the spaces in between. These wide avenues, that artificially divide and enclose the archaeological structures, continue to dominate the historic centre of Rome to date. By now we are so familiar with the image of a long vista with an imposing ruin highlighted at the end, that we forget this is a modern day embellishment, far removed from the original context of the ancient world.70 Yet, impossible to reverse, these powerful visions are likely to dominate the image of Rome for generations to come.

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Watkin 2009, p. 212.

Speer 1969, p. 96-98.

Speer 1969, p. 98.

Starobinski 1964.

Starobinski 1964.

Diderot 1995 [1767], p. 335.

Higgins 2018.

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Rewriting history – heritage management in the early Italian state

Inside the Forum, a startling panoramic view opens of the pictoresque skyline of the city. These green meadows, however, sit at the centre of Rome’s urban core, fenced and enclosed, unavailable for passing.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

The Aurelian Wall in the north, near villa Borghese. The walls were perforated rather mercilessly in the traffic reconfigurations of the early 20th century.

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Modern readings of historical wals

3. Ancient walls in the modern era 3.1 Modern readings of historical walls Compared to the other ancient monuments of the Italian patrimony, the Aurelian Wall required few renovations due to its robust construction and continuous maintenance along the millenia.

Its very preservation, on the other hand, serves as an example of how the conservative values of the Risorgimento,71 at times, undeniably assisted the preservation of large urban artifacts: today, Rome is one of the rare cities that have maintained their fortifications despite a forceful process of urbanisation and expansion. The Wall, despite its obsolescence as a military defence, semt to fit the ideological agenda of nationalists, and was adopted into the Fascist urban vision. It was thus maintained and reappropriated as an important emblem of the patrimony.

In the southern part of the circuit the majestic structure was preserved in isolation: located in the greenbelt, separated from the built fabric and protected by a steep rampart. Nationalist undertones were enhanced in the occasional conservation projects. In 1932 the gate Porta Pia, originally designed for the Popes by Michelangelo, was refurbished as the entrance to the Museo Storico dei Bersaglieri dedicated to the fallen Italian troops.72 Exhibiting military history affiliated to the capture of Rome in 1870, the choice of the site commemorates the events that led to the Italian unification, and the epochal breach of Porta Pia, where the Italian troops conquered the city. The wall’s towers and passages at the gate San Sebastiano, where the Museo delle Mura is now located, were first developed into a museum in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1939 – despite a public controversy – the monument, that had been open to the public for several years, was turned into a private studio apartment for the secretary of the fascist party, Ettore Muti, who stayed there from 1941 to 1943.73 In sharp contrast to the solemn views of the hilly wall parks in the south, in the north-east the fortifications had been exceptionally built on even ground. Due to their topographic position these stretches were more vulnerable to the planned and un-planned urban reconfiguratons of the modern era, suffering endless cuts and perforations to make way for the new boulevards.

Cut at nearly every road intersection, this part of the wall testifies of the rather violent traffic arrangements conducted in the early 20th century. The wall now blends into Rome’s bustling traffic, becoming the décor for the fast circulation of passing cars, buses, trams and scooters.

Quite remarkably, however, the wall was saved from any larger demolitions, giving way to the movement of the expanding city only where needed. This combination of continuity and heterogeneity makes the Aurelian Wall a unique structure among the European postfortification landscapes.74 The decline of the city wall A look into the historical infrastructure of other modern metropolises reveals how remarkable the extent of the preservation of Rome’s city wall is. Robust fortifications with multiple gates, a moat, and often additional structures in the frontier zones once enclosed almost all European settlements, towns and cities.75 Starting from the 17th century, however, following the ponderous

71 72 73 74

Risorgimento, “resurgence”, was the political and social movement that consolidated the states of the Italian peninsula into the single Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century.

Labuhn 2017, p. 203.

Museo delle Roma, Storia.

Labuhn 2017, p. 200.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

The apartment of Ettore Muti inside a gate tower, 1940. Picture by Luigi Moretti.

experience of the Thirty Years War, European war conventions respected the agreement of the “open city”. This policy meant that in the case of conflict a town without fortifications would not be destroyed.75Later, when European nationalisms began to emerge in the 18th century, the practice of city fortifications gradually transformed into the system of national defense.

Large defense lines along rivers, coasts and mountain chains were projected onto the European landscape, making city walls obsolete.76 Following the gradual industrialisation and the consequent developments in war technology, earthen fortifications gradually became useless. The obstructive qualities of city walls became a subject of critical discussion, as they were perceived unfit for the ideals and logistics of the modern, expansive city. In the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th century – after a relatively short period of abandonment – most cities took on an active demolition of their old fortifications, followed by radical spatial transformations of the post-fortification zone.

The governors of the cities were more than eager to do this, as they were finally able to expand beyond the restraining corset of the city wall. While its iconic status as a prototypical construction helped preserve the wall of Aurelian through millenia, little is left of the ancient walls of many other Roman colonies. Similarly, the modest remains of the mighty fortifications of medieval European cities have continued to fade into the modern urban landscape.

Beyond the possibility of expanding the metropolitan areas, the consideration of the wall zone and the adjacent moats as a possible source of hygienic and social problems contributed to the destruction of many fortifications. The arguments in favor of the walls’ dismantlement were further motivated by the need of recyclable building materials and the job opportunities 75

76

Many great European cities, such as London, Paris and Cologne were in fact built upon the fortified colonial cities of Rome’s expansive empire. After the fall of the Roman Empire this prototypical model of fortifications was adopted and developed in medieval cities across Europe and the Mediterranian.

Labuhn 2017, p. 201.

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Modern readings of historical wals

generated in the process.77 . Of the almost 1500 formerly fortified urban zones in Europe, less than ten per cent have preserved their fortifications until today. Most of the cities that preserved their fortifications did so because they became a part of the national defense system, because of topographical limitations, or because of such economic decline that neither wall dismantlement or city expansion were feasible.78 The dismantlement of the fortifications was considered a significant breaking point within European urbanism, as the old hierarchical configuration of the city inside and outside the wall was exchanged for the ever-expanding “urban sprawl”.

The modern paradigm of the city wall Despite the decreased authority of earthen fortifications due to the development of military technology, defensive walls have been employed as an instrument of politics, governance and control even in the 20th and 21st centuries. Still today walls continue to influence the daily lives of millions of people around the world, as urban areas and administrative regimes are divided and defended by an authoritarian architecture. Determining the borders between the territories of Israel and Palestine, North and South Korea, Egypt and Gaza, Spain and Morocco as well as many others, walls constrain the physical mobility of citizens, but they also mark social, cultural, religious and economic divisions. To prevent the increased migration caused by political instability and global warming, more walls are under planning or construction – such as the proposal to build a continuous barrier on the border of the United States and Mexico. In this case, as so many times before, the wall has become a concrete metaphor, an instrument of populist politics and authoritarian rule.

Even in central Europe, the typology of the city wall is not a mere ancient relic: they have been employed to divide nations, assert power and authority, and restrict the mobility of citizens until recent decades. From 1961 until 1989 a modest concrete rampart known as the “iron curtain” was erected in the middle of divided the city of Berlin, making two countries of one.

Larger than a sum of its parts, the enigmatic wall came to mark the worldwide conflict of the two opposing hemispheres simply referred to as “East” and “West”.79 The breach of the Berlin wall was celebrated across the West as triumphal recuperation of a symbolic unison. An imposing yet pragmatic construction, the city walls have always been, and perhaps always will be, as much a symbol of division as a concrete barrier.

Imagination-stirring as they are, defensive walls have had an inherent role in the common conscious, sparking diverse utopian and dystopian visions even in the modern era.

Unsurprisingly, city walls – in both spatial and symbolic terms – are still a topical concept within architectural theory and the urban paradigm. Among the postmodern contributions to the subject is the iconic, revisionist narrative Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture from 1972 by Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vreisendorp, Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. Finding inspiration in the imaginary megastructures of the architectural avant-garde, as well as the problemacy surrounding the Berlin wall at the time, Koolhaas and his friends imagined a fortification to be constructed around the city of London. Illustrated with hallucinatory views of the emerging urbanity, the story describes a divisive element, originally just some strings of barbed wire, developing into an impenetrable monument, guarded by armed watchmen. The symbolic and psychological effects of the wall unveil as the city is subdivided into the newly framed ‘good half ’, and the increasingly undesirable ‘bad half ’, now left outside the wall.

77 78 79

Labuhn 2017, p. 201.

Labuhn 2017, p. 215.

Dey 2011, p. 1.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

Much of Koolhaas’ storytelling and aesthetic was inspired by the Italian postmodern and radical architecture, which flourished in the second half of the 20th century. Originating in the historical capitals of northern Italy, the protagonists of the radical movement also had a special understanding of urban fortifications, and antagonistic as they were, made savage use of conventional typologies. Portrayed by the radicals, the whole formative configuration of the city – and the society – was bound to go down like the Berlin Wall, and due to its autocratic nature, the typology of the wall was frequently employed in their abstract urban visions. This was perhaps best presented in ‘No-Stop City’ by Archizoom associates, with the surmise that an ideal, equal and democratic society - a blissful existence - could only engender in a physical environment with no built walls whatsoever. Ideating a revolution through architectural mirage, the new generation of designers perfected concepts for an unrestrained living environment, taking an ironic stance to the idealism of both the modernists and their own.

Permanences – the lingering presence of historical walls Although the aversive nature of contemporary defenses may be easily defined, the character of historical, obsolete fortifications tends to be more complex. While the functions established for the almost universal typology of the city wall are still relevant to contemporary fortifications – such as those of military use, surveillance and control of citizens and incomers, as well as economical authority in marking the customs border – there are hardly any historical fortifications, that would continue to function as a military defence. Today, however, they are increasingly recognised as an important emblem of urban history. The remains of historical walls may thus be cherished for their archaeological or artistic values – what once was a pragmatic method of building, now represents an intricate example of expert handwork.

It should be noted, however, that fortifications, as an exceptionally robust and pragmatic architectural typology, required less care for their conservation than other historical monuments. On the contrary, some fortifications survived merely for the strength and durability of their original construction, despite the reduced efforts for their preservation or reconstruction. City walls built of stone, brick or concrete are generally durable even in state of ruin. Like many other ancient buildings, the masonry of the Aurelian wall underwent numerous renovations, but the structure’s concrete core sustained itself with little maintenance.

Of 20th century buildings only a few pieces of military architecture laid in reinforced concrete can compete with the stability of medieval and ancient fortifications.80 City walls, by large, are an exceptionally persistent urban typology: Even in the cities whose fortifications have been dismantled, this crucial moment is often perceivable in the morphology of city plans. Their footprint can often be traced in satellite images as a ring road or a wide boulevard encircling the city. Along circular waterways, parks and ring roads one may distinguish the old city centre on one side, and on the other side the 19th- and 20th-century layout with its broader streets, boulevards and esplanades. The age and design of nearby buildings, as well as the shape and scale of the street grid may display significant differences on the opposing sides of a former wall. Similarly, many old ramparts and water defenses continue to invigorate urban environments in the form of recreational, landscaped areas or public parks.

Along these more or less visible borders, some gates and towers may have been sporadically preserved as historical souvenirs.

In the early 20th century the French historian and urban planning theoretician Marcel Poëte established an urban theory centered on the phenomenon of ”permanences”. According to Poëte, even a lost monument may continue to guide the development of the urban fabric;

80

Lind 2017, p. 33.

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Modern readings of historical wals

cities tend to remain on their axes of development, maintaining the position of their original layout and growing according to the direction and image of their previous layers. The presence of older artifacts, however unrelevant to the functions of the contemporary city, thus retain a permanence through their form - their physical sign is engraved into the accumulation of urban elements.81 The remains of the city walls, then, are an inherent part of the cityscape of many European cities to date. Ruthlessly chopped and stripped off their militant, defensive purposes, historical walls – or their often quite modest remains – still continue to identify both physical and perceived space.

Similar permanences, inexplicable voids carved into the urban fabric by demolished town walls, can be traced in settlements around the world. Like a secret language, they unfold stories of not only the history of a former reign, but also the subsequent trajectories of urban curation – the measures that have been taken in order to rewrite local histories. Perhaps the most dramatic demolitions took place in the East, where city walls – in even greater scale than their European contestors – were an imminent part of the urban configuration of imperial China and the surrounding territories. The majestic fortifications, often built according to a strictly symmetrical, square plan, dominated the built environment of China until the Cultural Revolution. As the communist party rose to power in 1949, they ordered the demolition of all significant symbols of dynastic rule – including many of the ancient fortifications.

Although Beijing’s city walls have already been dismantled half a century ago, their colossal footprint still remains as a desolate cove within the city grid. Surrounded by empty, barred zones and wide motorways, only the imposing gate buildings were left on the site. Upon visiting the area I was accompanied by a retired government official, who elaborated the disorienting cityscape: according to him, Mao had stated that there “should never be walls”. The void was now filled with equally impenetrable concrete barriers and aluminum fences. Whether or not the iconic revolutionary was accurately quoted, it was clearly the symbol of the wall, a magnificent, monolithic work of the former emperors, that could not have coexisted with the urban configuration of the Communist society.

Perhaps more than any other historical typology, city walls have been frequently employed by modern ideologies – thus, it seems, their traces in the world of ideas are no less permanent than the physical scars with which they continue to mark our cities. Following the gradual decline of the transformative modern dogma and the political movements that revolutionised the urban paradigms of the 20th century, many countries have come to regret their losses, trying to repair the damages done to their historical infrastructure. Recently, the number of fortifications in Europe82 has been growing, because some cities have decided to reconstruct their once dismantled walls due to the increased appreciation of military history.83 In an attempt to enhance the impression of historicity in the urban sphere, old symbols and monuments, buildings and urban configurations have been revived. Many city walls and ancient fortifications have thus been redeveloped into tourist attractions, radically reforming the way in which they originally bordered and enclosed the urbanity.

81 See 82 83

Terranova 2008, p. 919–943. Poëte’s theory was frequently employed by Aldo Rossi; see Rossi 1982a, p.

57-59.

Many Asian cities also seem to develop a growing appreciation for military monuments – and built heritage in general – and some fortifications have been reconstructed even decades after their dismantlement.

Labuhn 2017, p. 215.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

The rampart of the wall is circled by busy highways. These towers now belong to Villa Medici, and serve as museums, studios or exhibition rooms of the institute.

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The Aurelian Wall – a collage of meanings and materials

3.2 The Aurelian Wall – a collage of meanings and materials “Now let us, by a flight of imagination, suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past—an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one.” 84 The famous analogy of Sigmund Freud, comparing the city of Rome to the layers of the human psyche, may not quite accurately describe the configuration of modern Rome as a whole – despite its undeniable cultural richness, the rulers of Rome have been rather selective in preserving its historical layers. The quote could, however, serve as an introduction to the mosaic of the Aurelian Wall, with its 19-kilometre circuit comprised of countless historical layers. Having witnessed the rise and fall of numerous regimes, and the dramatic evolution of the city within and around its fortifications, the fabric of the Aurelian Wall – with its war wounds, ceremonial gates, parasitic additions, car passages, inscriptions and graffitis – records countless overlapping stories of the city’s past.

The Aurelian Wall is among the very few Roman building projects that retained their original purpose and appearance relatively unchanged until the 19th century – as a pragmatic piece of architecture, the grand design of the wall paid no respect to the vast changes in political and religious regimes. Although the wall’s concrete core required little maintenance, the external stonework underwent several renovations as it was reappropriated by the Catholic Church.

Numerous emperors and Catholic popes ordered repairs to the walls as their military authority was reasserted. Thus the wall gained many Christian symbols and insertions, such as the altars frequently placed in its facade. However, the renovations were rarely made to the whole length of the wall and they were steered by functional rather than aesthetic premises, resulting in a somewhat polymorphic appearance.

Parasitic architectures As both the original construction and the refurbishments were often built in recycled materials, the wall reflects the circulation and change of Rome’s built environment meticulously. Now crumbling in a state of ongoing ruination, the Aurelian Wall itself was once assembled of, and onto, the ruins of earlier Roman architecture. Originally built on the remains of innumerable residential buildings in the 3rd century, the scars marking the former window arches, doors, joints and other constructions can still be distinguished in the masonry of the wall. In many places, the wall merges with even larger pre-Aurelian structures like old aqueducts and tombs.

Some unique details and stone-carved insertions tell of the specific programmes and functions of the buildings swallowed by the wall, such as the 2nd century castellum aquae near Porta Tiburtina that once served as a reservoir for water transported via the aqueduct.85 The remains of the early structures mingle with later additions installed by the Popes, and with the further alterations undertaken by the Italian government. In lieu of the demolished houses, others were built next to, or even atop the Aurelian Wall, disregarding the requirement of a 16-meter clearance between the wall and new constructions.86 During the 19th and 20th centuries, when the wall was no longer in use as a military defence, multiple houses were

84 85 86

Freud 2010.

Labuhn 2017, p. 203.

Labuhn 2017, p. 212.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

(above) The wall is incorporated with apartments at Piazza Fiume. (left) Sharp cut-outs and pompous additions in a traffic circle near Villa Borghese.

built onto the fortification or its ramparts, and most of the ancient wall’s towers were in fact inhabited until the early 20th century. Many of these spontanious insertions were half-legal settlements built against official regulations.

Along the circuit of the wall, its imposing appearance frequently turns quirky and pictoresque when it crumbles in asymmetrical formations of loosely jutting stones, or when its remains are used as a framework for attractively aged residential buildings and villas, surrendering to the daily routines of the locals. Whereas many other historical relics have been fenced and enclosed as museum objects, the Aurelian Wall continues to roam freely among the messy urban configuration of modern Rome, enclosing the various forms of urban life in its embrace.

With few efforts for its conservation, the Aurelian Wall has managed to conserve all the layers of its history. In keeping with Aldo Rossi’s notion of the “elements whose function has been lost over time; the value of these artifacts often reside solely in their form, which is integral to the general form of the city; it is, so to speak, an invariant of it.”

Owned by the city, the wall belongs to the public domain, but frequently adopts surprising roles in various constructions, acting as a plinth or a border for private estates, gardens or parking lots.87 In the northern parts of the wall, where it was built on solid ground as a chain of towers and connecting curtains, the structure assumed a particularly prosaic role, surrendering to the heavy traffic of the newly laid-out street grid. Here the walls were often perforated by car underpasses or cut altogether, sometimes at the frequent interval of a single city block.

87

On the east side of the city, the expansive structure even overlaps with the contemporary Ministry of Defence, representing its “remilitarized” frontier.

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The Aurelian Wall – a collage of meanings and materials

Furthermore, the various additions, subvertions and refurbishments of the wall are abundant in these stretches of the wall’s circuit.

During the 20th century many of the towers in this area were still in use: while some of the towers of the wall housed artists’ studios, legends were spoken of a hermit who would have spent decades in one of them. In some instances, the wall is used as a foundation for larger apartment units – next to Porta Tiburtina the wall is fully integrated with dwellings, and the curtains on the former outside of the wall perforated by windows. At Piazza Fiume, a chopped up section of the wall has been turned into a residential unit with an elaborately decorated house haphazardly inserted to its inner façade. Located next to a busy traffic intersection, the eclectic mix is completed with a little fenced garden housing a collection of historical remains and ancient columns.88 At Via Campania a stretch of the wall has been refurbished as a ceramics workshop, Studio Randone. Established within the wall’s covered sentry passages and towers as early as 1894, the aristocratic family of Francesco Randone ran their studio and educational programme in this extraordinary location for over a century, but seem to have been inactive since 2016. Next to the studio one can find countless other adjustments installed during the last century: half-built and half-ruined traces of various parasitic structures built of brick or concrete. Many of them appear to be little houses, storage rooms or terrace-like structures built onto the old sentry passages. The fabric of the wall, then, also manifests the conflicts and difficulties of Rome’s urban condition: Today, nearly all of the spaces within or next to the wall appear abandoned.

Monument in distress As residential settlements, local activities and uninstitutional initiaves find their habitat increasingly diminished in favour of touristic programmes, the conditions for the spontaneous reappropriation of historical buildings are in decline. Perhaps for the first time during its extensive life span, the Aurelian Wall is almost completely disused. While a couple of residential projects adjacent to the wall still continue to thrive, almost all programmes built inside the wall have perished during the last few decades. With no function, the deterioration of abandoned and unmaintained fortifications is rapid and uncontrollable. The ruination of the stone wall tends to begin in the upper parts of the structure: the rupture begins when clotted leaves and branches on the ridge or the rooftop prevent the rainwater from flowing down. Seeds floating in the air can easily attach on wet surfaces – thus the sight of moss, hay, small trees and shrubs pushing out from the cracks of the wall is common in long-abandoned properties. The stonework is loosened by the growth, and in time the rain dissolves the mortar turning it to sand and ablating the masonry. 89 The wall’s deterioration, of course, is a process that has continued for centuries – and as a process of destruction, it is a movement that is impossible to fully control. In the city, however, the violent forces of nature are supported by the mechanical stress engendered in the tumult of traffic and the ever-expanding urbanity. In many places, the outer facade of the wall borders the wide motorways, whereas the inner facade of the wall is enclosed within private backyards or parking lots. Corrupted by the pollution and vibration, the emptied towers have now fallen into disrepair. In the summer 2018, the roof of a tower at Via Campania crashed down, causing chaos in the nearby streets. Many stretches of the wall are on the verge of collapse – as the mortar is crumbling, much of the stonework could fall off any minute.

88 89

This is also the site of the tomb of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, “The Boy Poet” (ca 94 AD).

Lind 2017, p. 32-33.

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Ancient walls in the modern era

At the same time, the Aurelian Wall in its current, decadent state, is a vision embedded in the image and identity of Rome. Ruins are emblematic of historical landscapes, engendering meanings and aesthetical impressions that pristine buildings could never convey. While some consider the precarious atmosphere of incomplete or collapsing structures disturbing, many find the decay of forms fascinating: they visualise the passage of time and remind us of our own transcience. Ruination softens the body of the original monument, questioning, perhaps even subverting its meaning – a broken wall is an opening. Covered by weeds and bushes, with wild poppies growing between its stones, the ruins of the wall are a poetic contrast to their original role as a militant typology. In Rome, the relics of the wall bring the mirage of the ‘liberated’ ruin into the contemporary urban sphere.

However, the ideal of the ‘romantic ruin’ and the natural circulation of materials doesn’t always match with the reality of the corrupted, overpopulated city. The poetic notion of decay and perpetual evolution may collide with the neoliberal urban condition, where anything that is not inhabited or guarded, and has no obvious utility or recreational function, soon turns into a landfill. In a state of neglect, many of the obsolete sites along the Aurelian Wall have turned into unkempt brushwoods or feral wasteland replete with trash and tormented by rats. Some areas have been enclosed with metal fences, as the crippling facades could be dangerous for bypassers. Several patches are supported by temporary scaffolding, and covered by chipboards to prevent people from climbing the wall or its supporting structure.

On the other hand, the sites that at first glance appear to be abandoned, in fact house a rather unique biodiversity. The areas adjacent to the Wall, or its decadent, crumbling remains, still enclose many endangered life forms in their protection. The notches of the wall sprout various plants that might not survive in other urban environments, and their untamed growth colours

(left) Temporary scaffolding supports a collapsed facade. (below) Fences are placed to protect bypassers from danger caused by the wall’s deterioration.

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The Aurelian Wall – a collage of meanings and materials

Different homes within the wall.

An encampment of a homeless person in an underpass (above) and the terrace of an apartment building (right).

the borders of the city as a gontinuous blossoming flowerbed every spring. Some parts have become the habitat of various animals, such as bats and birds, hiding and nesting in the wall’s nooks or the nearby trees protected by the wall.

Among other species, people have appropriated the wall as a supporting framework for their spontaneous dwellings. In addition to the various parasitic building projects still invigorating its appearance, many of the wall’s openings and niches now frame the spontaneous settlements of the unsheltered homeless people in the city. Furthermore, the numerous pedestrian underpasses in the wall’s immediate vicinity now frame the camps or settlements of the homeless. As a curious example of the heavy-traffic planning in 20th century Rome, the underpasses were once designed to cross the “busy” roads that cut through the Aurelian Wall – however, as traffic on many of these side streets today is minimal, the only people using the tunnels are their current residents. As relatively spacious and sheltered hideouts, these passages in fact represent some of the most elaborately furnished and maintained accommodations of the homeless in central Rome.

The coexistence of the nineteenth-century city fabric and the ancient wall in Rome forms an interesting case in the discussion surrounding the question of whether or not the presence of fortications obstructed city expansion. Beyond these steep borderzones often difficult to cross, the city continued its processes of urbanisation – if in a somewhat chaotic manner. As the population and size of the city multiplied during the 20th century, the wall emerged as a divide of a different kind – a marker between the historical city and the residential peripheries. While the locals reside outside the circuit of the old wall, the urban core within the Aurelian Wall has become a spectacular passage designed for passers-by. The main historical sites, and nearly all touristic destinations are located within the boundary of the Aurelian Wall. Yet, only twenty percent of Romans reside in the urban area, while rest live in the suburbs.

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Rome interrupted – reclaiming the city

4 Rome interrupted – reclaiming the city 4.1 Heritage paradigms of the Italian postmodern ”So-called contextual preservation is related to the city in time like the embalmed corpse of a saint to the image of his historical personality.”90 –Aldo Rossi While the development of the Aurelian Wall intertwined with that of the city rather seamlessly, many other elements of Rome’s historical infrastructure emerged as isolated monuments following the gradual transformation of heritage sites that swept over Italy during the 20th century. After the Second World War Rome’s material heritage, previously promoted by the patrimony, reached a wider international interest fueled by the growing industry of international tourism. The increased mobility and strengthened global economy saw the unprecedented rise of tourism in the 1950’s and 60’s. The city of Rome was promoted by numerous glamorous films, such as the Roman Holiday and La Dolce Vita, which made the city a fashionable destination. Along with tourism came the inevitable rush of early gentrification.

The transformation of historical structures was uniform across Italy - poorer families were moved from their run-down houses to the outskirts, and their former residences replaced by shops, offices and prestigious residential buildings.91 The growing attractivity of the Italian capital gave birth to new values and policies of heritage management. In fact, the whole centre of Rome was officially announced a monument in 1980, as it was inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List. The importance of the preservation of the city as a historical document was enhanced – however, the short explanation of the designation failed to recognise the contemporary culture and ways of life as well as the innumerable ‘other’ histories of the place, as it focused on Rome’s founding myth and the impressive historical artifacts that testified of the history of the ancient capital.92 In the words of the Italian architectural historian and theorist Manfredo Tafuri: ”The ancient town became an object to be defended: in this way it was reduced to a myth.”93 As stated by the historian Kerstin Stamm, the inscription favoured “one particular narrative of history above the unlimited other histories of the same place, thus inevitably creating a hierarchy of values that mismatches their simultaneous presence and their relational, equal importance in this place.” Imposing such a hierarchy on the layers of culture is likely to affect participation in the appropriation of the place and the local customs sprouting in the historical milieu.94 Furthermore, in dismissing living culture as secondary or replaceable, the very setting of many unique ancient monuments was exchanged for the uniform touristic experience, produced for commodified ‘heritage sites’ worldwide. While the evolution in the theory and practices of archaeology and conservation were able to develop more efficient tools for preserving the information contained within the historical object, the objectives and outcomes of the preservative actions arguably lost the sense of their urban relevance. ”Conservation has been reduced to a problem of urban stage-designing”, stated Manfredo Tafuri already in 1968,

90 91 92 93 94

Rossi 1982a, p. 60.

Giannantonio 2018, p. 117.

See Stamm 2017, p. 51.

Tafuri 1980a, p. 58.

Stamm 2017, p. 51-52.

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Heritage paradigms of the Italian postmodern

”arbitrary in its premises and purposes, because it is not substantiated by an organic historical consideration of the problem.”95 Modernism was claimed responsible for abandoning the natural methods of reuse and stratification of urban spaces, as the cities and suburbs of the new age were designed from scratch, with dreams of an uninhabited tabula rasa: ”What was missing was a clearly structured new code, through which one could decipher and renew the corpus of urban and territorial environments with their complex historical dialectics.”96 Within the radically renewed modernist dogma of architecture, urban artifacts were created to serve particular functions in a static way, their structure precisely coinciding with the function they performed at their conception. Remnants of the past didn’t fit the stripped purity of forms and ideas. ”By producing a neat cut between the ancient and the new, the historical centres were conceptually enclosed in an abstract dimension: they were, in fact, reduced to unusable fetishes.”97 Transformative monuments - between form and function Italy’s postwar architectural theory found its paragon in the layering methods of older architecture. Aldo Rossi’s L’architettura della citta,98 contesting functionalist tenets, was part of a theoretical watershed that aimed at debunking the dogmas of the modern movement. In Rossi’s view, the city is a product of collective and individual efforts and their accumulation through time - a ’man-made’ thing.99”I maintain”, Rossi states, “that the city is something that persists through its transformations, and that the complex or simple transformations or functions that it gradually undergoes are moments in the reality of its structure.”100 An urban artifact is defined by its ability to sustain history within its form –”Thus we see the importance of the parameter of time in the study of urban artifacts. To think of a persistent urban artifact as something tied to a single period in history constitutes one of the greatest fallacies of urban science.”101 Rossi joined the important voices of the postmodern era102 as he criticised the strive of planners to distance themselves from local values in order to find the hidden layers of history – the promise of the word archaeology (arche “beginning” + logos “account”), that if we dig deep enough, for long enough, we will find our origins.103 For Rossi, the dissolving of architecture in its specific historical context is rejected in favour of the accumulated meanings assumed by the urban artifact in its unique location, and the relation established to this placement, locus: ”In contextual preservation there is a sort of urban naturalism at work which admittedly can give rise to suggestive images – for example, a visit to a dead city is always a memorable experience – but in such cases we are well outside the realm of a past that we can still experience.”

95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102

103

Tafuri 1980a, p. 58.

Tafuri 1980a, p. 58.

Tafuri 1980a, p. 57.

Architecture of the City, 1966/1982.

Lopes 2015, p. 108.

Rossi 1982a, p. 55.

For Rossi, the admiration of the mutable ancient buildings was intertwined with a critique of modernist theory and their naive functionalist classifications, challenging the idea “that all urban artifacts are created to serve particular functions in a static way and that their structure precisely coincides with the function they perform at a certain moment.” Rossi 1982a, 61.

Similar threads of thought were represented in the international architectural debate by the likes of Roberto Venturi and Louis Kahn. Impressed by the multifunctional mutability of classical architectural typographies (such as the gallery; both a room and a passage at once), they opposed the ‘anti-environmental’, ‘antihistorical’ stance taught by the modernists, and by implication questioned such rigid specialisation and limited functionalism: “Form evokes function.” Venturi 1966, p. 34.

Parry 2017, p. 129.

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Layers of local history: the wall has evolved from a divisive element into a site of social cohesion. The ancient fortification has housed the ceramics studio Randone since 1894.

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Heritage paradigms of the Italian postmodern

In a somewhat radical manner, Rossi goes on to divert the arenas of archaeology from those of architecture: ”Naturally, then, I am referring mainly to living cities which have an uninterrupted span of development. The problems of dead cities only tangentially concern urban science; they are matters of the historian and the archaeologist. It is at best an abstraction to seek to reduce urban artifacts to archaeological ones.”104 The Italian architect and urban planner Giuseppe Samonà, calling for a braver contamination between the contemporary and the historical city, adds that ”any effort to preserving the historico-artistic heritage of our towns must dissolve its negative charge, and allow the old texture to enter the process of reshaping urban life, and where this project has not yet started, must create the right conditions to bring it about.”105 As important landmarks and emblems within the urban configuration, monuments were discussed as artifacts that could both retard and accelerate the process of urbanisation in a city, making them a catalytic component in the urban sprawl. When a monument retards the process of urbanization, it is considered by Rossi as “pathological”. A revitalising feature, on the other hand, is described as “propelling”, providing a past that can still be experienced. Rossi illustrates the difference between permanent elements that are vital and those that are pathological: in the first instance one can still experience the history of the site, but the structure has continued to adapt to the changes of its environment, assuming different functions. As our societies and urban forms continue to change, we can imagine further modifications.

The lifeline of the ’propelling’ monument seems to be intertwined with that of the city: “One is struck by the multiplicity of functions that a building of this type can contain over time and how these functions are entirely independent of the form. At the same time, it is precisely the form that impresses us; we live it and experience it, and in turn it structures the city.“106 These monuments tend to synchronise with the process of urbanisation, as they are not only defined by their purpose – nor by their context. Instead, they have survived due to their unique form and character, able to accommodate different uses over time. The pathological, mummified monuments, however, stand virtually isolated in the city – nothing can be added, and the only part we can imagine ourselves playing in their story is the ever more artificial staging of their unattainable past.107

104

Rossi 1982a, p. 60.

Samona 1959 in Tafuri 1980a, p. 59.

106 Rossi 1982a, 29.

107 “Real time tends to erode and supersede the carefully reconstructed or mimicked imagery of a specific historical context.” Rossi 1982a, p. 59-60.

105

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4.2 Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism “Ephemeral is what only lasts one day: for us it meant to navigate on sight, to be able to be agile, to overcome the politics of the plan in a world where life is faster than those who think it. Ephemeral, for us, was to stage a model, discern the traces emerging, highlighting them and reconstructing a memory, imagining.“108 In Rome, the discourse around the city’s urban development and the maintenance of the vast historical patrimony took an epic turn in the late 1970’s. Public institutions were undergoing a major reform process: for the first time in history, the city council of Rome was ruled by the Left. Th e “C ouncil fo r interventions in th e historic city centre” was inaugurated under the mayorship of the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. Here the monuments’ renovation and restoration projects were coordinated in liaison with the revitalisation of their urban surroundings. The young architect Renato Nicolini was elected, as head of the Cultural Department, to renew the cultural programme of the city. Prompted by the need to react to the troubled atmosphere suffocating Rome during the years of terrorism and criminality, cultural initiatives were brought outside their traditional setting, into the public realm – the streets, the parks, abandoned buildings and even archaeological sites.

The radical artistic and social projects curated by Nicolini culminated in the festival Estate Romana, “Roman Summer”. The yearly programme was inaugurated in 1976, illuminating the severely divided city of Rome by means of ephemeral architecture and spectacular events.

For a century, the speculative construction had been fragmenting the urban fabric: while the historical center was specialising in political, economic and cultural functions or catering to the needs of the increasing flow of international tourists, the displacement of the inhabitants towards the peripheries and the serious shortcomings of the new residential complexes had produced a sense of distrust towards the management of the city.109 The change was initiated from the nucleus of both the physical city and its mythical identity – the historical centre. In 1978 twelve prolific architects were invited to develop hypothetical creative itineraries based on a fictitious condition of the capital, the one presented in the famous 1748 plan by Giovanni Battista Nolli.110 The motivation for this endeavour of bold iconoclasm, titled Roma Interrotta, was to cancel “centuries of inertia and property speculation”, thus departing from the Nolli plan as the “last document of coherent urban design”.111 The plan of Nolli, indeed, was a milestone for visualising the texture of the city: the continuum of accessible space such as streets, piazzas, churches, theater interiors, palace courtyards, entries and stairways were identified with the colour white, in opposition to the solid black of private, inaccessible spaces.112 Thus it described the sphere of movement within the city, urban demographics and city-planning issues with a precision that few contemporary maps could compete. The plan was thus adopted as the point of departure for reimagining the urban configuration. “It is easier to design the city of the future than that of the past”, proclaimed the mayor Argan. “Rome is an interrupted city, because it has stopped being imagined and it and begun to be (poorly) planned.”113

108

Interview with Bruno Restuccia in Fava 2017, p. 151.

Fava 2017, p. 9.

110 Fava 2017, p. 11.

111 As stated in the exhibition catalogue for Roma Interrotta.

112 Lehner 2017, p. 218.

109

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

Speculative maps of Rome by Piero Sartogo, Costantino Dardi, Antoine Grumbach, James Stirling, Paolo Portoghesi, Romaldo Giurgola, Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Michael Graves, Leon Krier, Aldo Rossi, Robert Krier.

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(above) The Aurelian Wall wrapped in polypropylene in an enchanting piece by Christo, 1974. Picture by Harry Shunk. (left) Constantino Dardi’s temporary galleries inserted to the wall for the exhibition “Avanguardia Transavanguardia”, 1982.

Image from Metamorfosi n. 1-2, 1985.

113

The obvious reference for the project was the famous etching of Campo Marzio by Piranesi – an endeavour of violent pluralism, not simply an archaeological plan of a part of Rome, but a prototypical urban project that put forth an enchanting commentary of the existing city, and a model for its reformulation. 114 The contributions of the architects of Roma Interrotta were an imaginative series of radical interventions, often departing from ancient typologies. Rather than urban design, the collaborative project was a series of gymnastic exercises of imagination and memory.115 The climax of the project was the exhibition, where the secular utopias were introduced to the public, creating a moment of reflection upon the essence of the city from a radically unprejudiced position, overturning preordained visions of the existing.116 117 Sparking critical discussion on the themes of the urban, the avant-garde programme of Estate Romana made an effort to reach a wide audience beyond Rome’s aristocratic intelligentsia. The festival was inaugurated with an open-air cinema built in the Roman Forum, inside the Basilica of Maxentius. 118 Reaching an audience of thousands of people in many of the screenings, the

113 114 115 116 117 118

Argan 1978 in Fava 2017, p. 11.

Aureli & Tattara 2013 Argan 1978 in Fava 2017, p. 11.

Fava 2017, p. 11.

One of the contributors, the American architect and theorist Colin Rowe, went on to develop his concept of polyphonic utopia in another seminal book, Collage City. See Rowe & Koetter 1978.

Nicolini 1997, p. 26-27.

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

historical space, formerly employed only for the summer concerts enjoyed by the Roman elite, was for the first time opened to a wider public. The movie marathons extended the admission to the basilica well beyond the normal opening hours, introducing new ways of experiencing the archaeological site and expanding the way in which the historical monument related to its surroundings. According to Nicolini, “the show was absolutely not what was projected onto the screen, but it was above all what happened on the benches that had been placed in the Basilica of Maxentius.”

Beyond the unusual cinematographic experience, the event made a poignant commentary of the city’s development by introducing – if only temporarily – alternatives to its static configuration.

Nicolini underlined how the realization of the highway Via dei Fori Imperiali during the Fascist era had distorted the composition of the entire Forum: by modifying the crossing of the area surrounding the basilica, the project made an attempt to redefine and ‘correct’ this vision. The historic center of Rome thus began to transform itself by means of minimal or non-architectural structures, finding in the limited time of the festival an intersection between project, restoration and use119.

Immaterial urbanism – archaeology of the memory Another seminal intervention introduced by Estate Romana was the 1982 exhibition Avantgarde Transavantgarde. The exhibition was built within the Aurelian Wall in the stretch between Porta Metronia and Porta Latina. The architect Constantino Dardi designed the spatial configuration as a moment of mutual trespassing between art and architecture. The historical framework of the Aurelian Wall functioned as a passage connecting the ethereal white cubes inserted to the Wall, mutually bound by its openings. The suspended white cubes were the gallery rooms containing the works of each of the exhibited artists. Dardi himself described this view as “evocative of the ancient times, where the encampment of the barbarians or the nomads would lean against the walls of the eternal city.” 120 The metallic platform of the cubic rooms, joined into the arched openings of the Aurelian Wall, thus formed a threshold between interior and exterior, the permanent and the temporary, heavy and light masses – between contemporary art and the architecture of the monument.

The artistic content was supported by the reuse of the chosen venue, temporarily opening a historical site that had long been closed from the public, transporting the spectators to the unknown within their everyday surroundings. The unique sense of transience and temporality in the milieu – the ongoing ruination of the Aurelian Wall – was incidentally emphasised due to the collapse of a marble frieze at the nearby gate Porta Latina only a few days before the opening of the exhibition. As a result of the public attention evoked by the dramatic event, the exhibition was accompanied by the inauguration of a conservation initiative directed at preserving the Aurelian Wall. Thus, exposure and restoration could benefit each other, becoming the facets of a mutual project of memory and rediscovery.

In the curation of Estate Romana, archaeology, as the unraveling of figures and meanings, became both an analogy and a source of inspiration: in exploring the historical environments, forms and images would surface in a moment of rediscovery, canceling obsolete beliefs. Each site required a specific solution: whether to re-knit or dissolve the meshes, to make the figure more complex or simpler. 121 The difficult task of reappropriating such valuable and fragile

119

“The show was absolutely not what was projected onto the screen, but it was above all what happened on the benches that had been placed inside the Basilica of Maxentius.” Renato Nicolini as quoted in Fava 2017, p. 60.

120 Pavan & Dardi 1997, p. 92.

121 See Dardi 1985, p. 112.

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environments, charged even in their inactivity with ancient meanings, determined the premises of an immaterial urbanism: a doctrine that found its premises not so much in transforming the built environment itself, but in altering the symbolic connotations, messages and values imposed on the familiar context.122 In light, reversible architectures, such as the cinema of Maxentius and the gallery of the Aurelian Wall, the project found a way of enhancing the existing landscape and manipulating reality while preserving the original structures inaltered.

For the third edition of Estate Romana in 1979, the architects Franco Purini and Laura Thermes were invited to organise the constellation of single initiatives into a project coordinated on an urban scale. The project Parco Centrale, bridging together four distant points located in the city’s developing suburbs, reached its focus beyond the old border of the Aurelian Wall, responding to the increased marginalization of the suburbs. One of the iconic works in this ephemeral city was the Teatrino Scientifico, “Scientific Theatre”. Designed as a white, cubic mass, the temporary building took a very different stance on the surrounding urbanity than the other early interventions: here, the theatre was designed as a space to escape the city, a universe within itself. It enclosed the stage and the surrounding balconies built for the audience into its own sphere, looking inwards, pushing the surrounding landscape into oblivion. The spectators, positioned above, followed the spectacle down on the stage like a scientific experiment, like events on an operating table.123 The curators of Estate Romana organised their events both in the historical center and the peripheral margins of the city – at times simultaneously – thus stitching together the spatial incontinuities of Roman urbanity. Redefining the communicative flows within the city, the individual interventions merged in both thematic and spatial terms. Bringing together footage from three other locations at opposite ends of the city, the installation at Villa Torlonia acted as a command center where the material of the events flowed together. Here the films and the interviews were reworked and broadcast by rows of monitors placed on a metal bridge that crept between the trees of the garden. What had happened the night before was continually reproduced in a process where everything blended into an engaging, iconic simultaneity. The cold light of the monitors lit up the crumbling facade of the historical building dissipated by strong drafts, its falling stuccos and torn tapestries. The contrast produced by the sight of the deteriorating neoclassical building and the futuristic, technological element constructed next to it anticipated the apocalyptic visions realised three years later in the movie Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.124 Art and anarchy Each of the projects positioned itself to the urban and societal context in a unique way, ranging from poetic to furiously political, from spectacular to minimal – and often combining all these seemingly contradicting characteristics. Two radical exhibitions, Il teatro nella Repubblica di Weimar and T6080 were organised in 1978 and 1980 at the museum Palazzo delle Esposizioni, once forcefully modified by Mussolini and still organized according to the Fascist vision. “We began to clean up the building of the trappings that humiliated us”, Renato Nicolini stated, as the contributors of the exhibition conquered the defaced monument with revolutionary installations and downright anarchy. 125 Beyond the formal outcome of the exhibitions, the contradictory project of the Palazzo was a critique towards the values embedded with

122

Nicolini 1997, p. 23-35.

This comparison was presented by the architect himself: Interview with Franco Purini in Fava 2017, p. 159.

124 Interview with Franco Purini in Fava 2017, p. 158-159.

125 Renato Nicolini. Comune di Roma, Assessorato alla cultura - Esposizione nazionale quadriennale d’arte, 1990. p. 235.

123

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

(above) Setup for the first film screenings at the Basilica of Maxentius, 1977. (left) Installations of the exhibition T6080 in Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1980. Archives of Maurizio di Puolo.

the building itself, seeking a sense of empowerment in tainting this contested heritage. The crossing of norms and regulations in the name of art at times impetuously contradicted the efforts to protect monuments and people. However, the case of the Palazzo serves as a baffling example of the mediative power held by the Department of Culture during Estate Romana’s era of dizzying cultural activity between 1977 and 1985.

Much like in the ancient Carnivals, 126 where social roles were reversed and norms about desired behavior were suspended, the Estate Romana was a temporal interlude during which the city was transformed before falling back into its everyday life. For a strictly defined, but cyclical period of time, the Carnival discovered the “other face” of everyday reality and the urban environment, a face always at hand, but normally hidden from view and forbidden to touch.127 During these nine years – the so-called “ephemeral season” – parties, performances and exhibitions became a part of a specific social and political programme infused with a precise architectural language. To overcome the division between the centre and the 126

In the past, such celebrations were a state of exception, where the secret solidarity between the anomie and the came to light. Periodical festivities - such as the Anthesterie and Saturnalia of the classical world or the charivari and the carnival of the medieval and modern world – were characterized by an unbridled license and the suspension and overthrow of normal legal and social hierarchies. During these feasts, whose equivalents were widely practiced in different cultures and different eras, people might disguise themselves and behave like animals, masters served slaves, men and women exchanged parts and diligent behavior were considered legitimate or, at the least, unpunishable. They inaugurated a period of anomie, temporarily subverting the social order. Agamben 2003, p. 91.

127 Bauman 2000, p. 108.

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impoverished, peripheral suburbs, and to save the historical neighbourhoods from the process of gentrification to which they seemed destined, the manifestations and festivities became a strategic element in the effort to subvert the restrictive logic of the capital, encouraging the reappropriation of the public realm that had been abandoned as the inhabitants were forced to flee to a safer, private dimension.128 The selected sites spanned from archaeological parks to historical monuments, and again to the most demotic environments, thus constructing intriguing juxtapositions in time and space.

In the Mattatoio the facilities of a former slaughterhouse were reintroduced to the city after years of abandonment as a music venue for rock and jazz concerts. Located in the low-income workers’ district Testaccio, the old slaughterhouse was a mythological artifact of modern Rome, a stage of death, but also an emblem of the Roman working class. As in the other interventions, the main purpose of the project was to bring attention to the themes of urban change and the existing condition of the environment, stimulating the interest of the public and thus advocating greater participation of citizens in the decision-making processes of the city.

Renato Nicolini himself stated: “The old slaughterhouse was reconquered and from now on the debate on its reuse will have to come around a precedent difficult to ignore.”129 In his declaration Nicolini captured the transformative power of the ephemeral – in staging an urban experiment, instead of reaching for utopian visions, the intervention could set a precedent with an open end, introducing possibilities that may have been unthinkable. The Mattatoio, in fact, continued to serve as a cultural venue, and today it houses the Faculty of Architecture, various event locations and even parts of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, MACRO. The events weaved together the efforts of an expansive community of artists, architects and organisations. Among the most intriguing were the editions dedicated to poetry, finding imaginative settings for their festivals – such as the ascetic pavillion built on a desert beach outside the city, or the New Years celebration 1983 inside the tunnel of Traforo, a car passage located in the central area below the Quirinale hill.130 The selection of the sites followed an instinctive and emblematic logic131: titled 82 Tunnel 83, the vaulted gallery of the 347-metre long underpass became a ritual passage, humorously presented as a metaphoric transition from the darkness into the new year. Providing a warm setting for the collective festivities in the cold of winter, the tunnel was reappropriated with no additional constructions, only by setting up 28 arches of luminaries along its length. The architectural experience was created by the simple spatial sensation of an endless gathering in the continuous room.

The bodies of the participants thus became the architecture itself, where the view was the same for both the performer and the spectator of the festival. Special attention was directed to the selection of the site that required only a minimal intervention to evoke a sense of spectacle, an unforeseen transformation. In addition to a series of performances inside the tunnel, the event inaugurated the winter edition of the now well-known cinema of Maxentius. After midnight, the Maxentius cooperative occupied the cinemas adjacent to the tunnel to screen premiere movies and cult films, expanding the underground event onto the surrounding areas, bringing new life to the neighbourhood that for two days found its center in the tunnel reconquered by pedestrians.132

128

Nicolini 2011, p. 46.

Nicolini, Purini & Bartolucci 1981, p. 20.

130 Fava 2017, p. 88.

131 Interview with Simone Carrella in Fava 2017, p. 145.

132 Fava 2017, p. 88-96.

129

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

RN:

133 Once “Italia Nostra�134, as it spoke about defending the historical centers, also spoke about defending the social life of the historical centers. Not only the artistic heritage. Also the human aspects, the traditions, the community, the people...

PS: Not anymore?

RN: Well, I think some would want to burn certain metropolitan figures at the stake...

PS: Which figures?

RN: The outcast, the slum boy, the drug addict...

PS: Are these positive figures?

RN: Of course they are positive figures. It is clear that the fight against drugs must be made, as well as the battle against the marginalization and degradation of the suburbs. But how do we want to do it, by expelling the unfit?

(left) Teatrino scientifico on Via Sabotino, 1979.

Archives of Giuseppe De Boni and Ugo Colombari. Perspective drawing by Franco Purini.

133

Piero Sansonetti in conversation with Renato Nicolini in Fava 2017, p. 169.

134 Italia Nostra, founded 1955, is an Italian nonprofit organisation dedicated to the protection and promotion of the country’s historical, artistic and environmental patrimony.

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Rome interrupted – reclaiming the city

(above) New Year’s celebration “82 Tunnel 83”. Article published in Paese Sera 2.1.1983 (left) Exhibition setup for “The tI alian Economy Between the Two Wars“ in the Colosseum by Studio Ascarelli.

Collections of Maxxi.

Sediments of a transition The aim of the curators of Estate Romana was to create experiences able to link, through memory, the places in the city with the personal experiences of the participants – the temporary architecture thus turned, in time, into layers of meaning within their urban settings, threads of possibility to be rediscovered in the archaeology of the mind. In this process, the individual events turned into sediments of a transition: ”Things that can be expressed with architecture are not infinite, much less than those experienced. When a feeling, an experience, is intertwined with an urban place, this bond is as strong as it is inextricable.”135 Thus, the events helped construct a new collective understanding of the urban, reprogramming the city through the active involvement of its users. 136 Although conducted as a co-operative by a number of architects, the festival developed a distinctive aesthetic style composed of white, geometrical masses. The delicate and pure forms were constructed on simple frameworks, giving the impression of weightless shapes floating in the air. Despite the complexity of the inclusive activities housed inside these temporary structures, the architecture sought a surprising, yet harmonous appearance, recognising the city’s dimensions and following the lines of its urban development. In contrast to many contemporary ’pop-up’ programmes, the design of the festival avoided all superfluous parts, unnecessary signs, symbols or colours. Yet, the ethereal, light forms stood in the historical landscape undaunted, recognizing the ability to amaze the as link between architecture and the public.

135 136

Nicolini, Purini & Bartolucci 1981, p. 67.

Fava 2017, p. 110.

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

The pragmatic, symmetrical design semt to refer to the iconic forms of ancient ruins, but also to the simplicity of modernist architecture from earlier decades. The element of irony was thus slyly introduced to the harmonous scene of temporary utopia – the abstract forms of Estate Romana, depending on their context, may have engendered vivid associations to classicism, but also to the stripped monuments of Italian rationalism, that was often linked to Mussolini’s urban visions. When an exhibition exploring Fascist legacy, titled The Italian Economy Between the Two Wars, was put up in the Colosseum in the form of a striking, white construction, this connection, or perhaps deliberate commentary, became achingly clear.

A polemic arose of the ’plastic-model’ replicating a narrow slice of the lost parts of the structure of the Colosseum while connecting the various exhibition pavilions. ”Is it right, they ask, ’to desecrate the blood of the martyrs’ slain in the Imperial Games with modern interests? We would say yes: From blood to culture (let’s hope in the future). Is it right to create life-size plastic models resembling Mussolini’s ’monuments’? It is precisely those ’monuments’ that resemble plastic models. Is it right, above all, to revitalize, with an architectural awareness, authentic monuments in ruins? We would answer, certainly, yes.”137 Emerging iconoclasms – ephemeral architecture across Italy Motivated by the same search for amazement and the desire to reconstruct a collective imagination, the ephemeral means of spatial production emerged all across Italy at the end of the 20th century. In Florence the simultaniously stimulating and suffocating presence of history was opposed in bold public works. While Gianni Pettena’s striking, yet poetic works experimented with natural elements and distinctive graphics to transform the appearance of monumental buildings, the architect group UFO became the ambassador of an ironic, at times anarchistic approach to ephemeral architecture. Conquering the piazza with huge inflatable structures at the demonstration against the American war in Vietnam, UFO’s interventions occupied, invaded and dispersed space as they interacted with the political movement, eventually turning into its icon.138 Radical utopias and their temporary embodiments thus invaded the space of memory, drawing here the first lines of cultural and urban renewal.

Despite the similarities between the coeval cultural and political uprisings in Rome, each of the local movements established rather different tools and theories for reclaiming historical environments, resulting in surprisingly divergent aesthetical outcomes.

At the same time, Venice was emerging as an ever more important stage for the international architectural community – and an ever more popular centre of historical tourism and the ‘heritage’ discourse. In 1979, Aldo Rossi built the famous Teatro del Mondo, “Theatre of the World”, at the Venice Biennale. The floating scenic space sailed into the city pulled by a ferry, an artifact and an event at once.139 The piece encapsulated many of the themes addressed in Rossi’s texts about analogy and the analogous city. In its dream-like, naïve apathy, the colourful, floating object revealed the whole context of the surrounding city in a new light – ridiculed, yet marvelous – described by Tafuri as the “cruel purity of the childlike gaze as an exaltation of a formal event.”140Encircling the island, the theatre roamed like a play of the imagination to be found in new scenarios and correspondences, appearing in suggestive images as ephemeral as the construction itself.141

Bruno Zevi in L’architettura Cronache e storia.

Orlandoni & Navone 1974, p. 32.

139 Lopes 2015, p. 200-201.

140 Tafuri 1980b, p. 8.

141 Lopes 2015, p. 201.

137 138

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Despite its seeming absurdity, the theatre of Rossi makes us reflect on the themes of urban change in historical centres. Finding inspiration in the inability of change in the pictoresque, frozen cityscape of Venice, the theatre defines itself in time, rather than space: with the unexpected emergence of this imaginative sight the cityscape could, for a moment, be dramatically altered. Rossi suggested that architecture should have the same transformative force: “I believe that the new buildings will have to rediscover the architecture of the ancient city.” New architectural interventions should thus rip off the mask of convention attached to the face of the historical structure: “Even if this mask constitutes the fascination from which we cannot detach ourselves, it is destroyed, and destroyed it must remain – because every intervention is, by nature, merciless.”142 The legacy of the Roman Summer The events in Rome, as well as Venice and Florence, illustrate the height of the Italian postmodern, unique moments where the radical ideas found their way into the physical world. Here, the hedonistic enjoyment of the fleeting moment merged with political reflection, contesting the premises of the production of public space. One might argue that the antagonistic forefigures of the Italian postmodern – as Italian creatives, leftists and self-proclaimed anarchists in general – often belonged to the aristocracy, and thus had little personal experience of the other side of the cavernous socio-economic gap dividing the country: while the most fortunate section experienced the complex phenomena of Rome’s urban decay and gentrification as a monotone environment with few creative opportunities and troublesome logistics, the less advantaged were left with no roof over their head. It would be naïve to think that large, systematic issues, such as gentrification, could be solved by temporary interventions – or any other form of architectural design.

However, challenging the hermetic approach of general urban design strategies, Estate Romana managed to introduce alternatives, temporary microdemocracies, revealing the catalytic power of the ephemeral in its inclusive outset. In the ephemeral’s ability to get around the otherwise undefeatable processes that dominate the use of urban territories, it created “a city that, at least a little, was the home of all, and in this way made you feel less the social limitation of a poor, insufficient home in the suburbs – an ephemeral city that reframed the conflicts of the use and access of public space. A spectacular machine that overcame the distances between monumental and marginal spaces; a powerful postmodern representation that featured the crisis of traditional formal categories.”143 The cynical idealism of the age – a sense of collective irony combined with a rebellious spirit – was encapsulated in a statement of the American architect Robert Venturi: “The architect who would accept his role as combiner of significant old clichés – valid banalities – in new contexts as his condition within a society directs its best efforts, its big money, and its elegant technologies elsewhere, can ironically express in this indirect way a true concern for society’s inverted scale of values.”144 While activating the urban predominantly through ephemeral remedies, the programmes of Estate Romana were always part of a larger strategy of urban development145 – thus, at times, utilising temporarity as a shortcut to realising and experimenting with the desired urban 142

Rossi 1982b, p. 13-14.

Interview with Renato Nicolini in Fava 2017, p. 18.

144 Venturi 1966, p. 44 145 According to Nicolini, the cinema of Maxentius had, ultimately, posed the problem of the configuration of the archaeological park from the Campidoglio to the Appia Antica, Villa Torlonia that of the abandonment and the casualness of the use of the historical villas. The Mattatoio had raised the question of the revitalisation of the rock square, whereas the various ephemeral stagings of Estate Romana addressed the need for cultural centers that lacked in the city. Nicolini 1985, p. 26.

143

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Estate Romana and ephemeral urbanism

configurations. With the resignation of Renato Nicolini, however, the decade of ephemeral architecture came to an end, as the Department of Culture directed its efforts, almost exclusively, in long-term projects.146 Estate Romana succeeded in raising awareness about Rome’s public space and forgotten monuments by supporting preservation initiatives, and the temporary conversions of spaces catalysed the development of numerous cultural venues. Yet, the largest infrastructural changes initiated in lieu with Estate Romana never saw their completion.147 In many cases, the attempts to transform the catalytic power of ephemeral interventions into permanent developments fell short due to heavy, bureaucratic processes and financial struggles.

The Estate Romana, once a radical endeavor, is today continued as a part of Rome’s popular summer event: a “classic folk feud” providing an extensive programme of entertainment across the city. Thus, the revolutionary festival and its modern-day equivalent do not share much more than the name. The “ephemeral season” in the late 70’s and early 80’s had marked the highest point of a descending parable, as the festival’s artistic composition soon began to decline due to the increasingly decentralized and rigid division of the tasks initially entrusted to the advocates of the Roman avant-garde. Its political and controversial dimensions, as well as the all-encompassing curation and aesthetic of the event, gradually dissolved into a fragmented set of events, mixing into the humdrum of the general touristic programme with its endless flux of transitory signs and images. In the words of Franco Purini, “the idea that the metropolitan reality should be the place of a continuous and conflictual discovery of the new has become rather marginal”. 148

146

Fava 2017, p. 97 For example, the plan to clear out Mussolini’s motorway Via dei Fori Imperiali, already tested during the cinema of Maxentius as the street was temporarily pedestrianised in all its length, was intended to repair and bridge together the archaeological parks of the Forum. This would have enabled the previously excavated structures under the avenue to be exposed and the area of the Imperial Forums reunited, rendering its constellation accessible and intelligible whilst protecting the Roman Forum and Colosseum from the deleterious effects of heavy traffic. The project, however, still lies on the drawing board of Roman city planners. Higgins 2018, p.

294.

148 According to Franco Purini, the continuing summer festival entitled Estate Romana is today a ‘pleasant party’ directed to a wide audience, which, however, has no interest for artistic endeavours: for experimentation or exploration. Interview with Franco Purini in Fava 2017, p. 163 147

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Controversies in conservation

Tourists at the Colosseum.

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Commodified heritage – historicity as a tourist attraction

5 Controversies in conservation 5.1 Commodified heritage – historicity as a tourist attraction Rome’s historical fabric has undergone significant renovations during the last century. Whereas the first deliberate modifications of Rome’s archaeological layout were steered by a nationalist agenda – along with other early modern urban conceptions – during the last decades urban planning has been guided by the increasing flux of tourism. Today, Rome is one of the most popular travel destinations in the world – it is the 3rd most visited city in Europe, and receives an average of 7-10 million tourists a year, which may double on holy years. Many of the city’s most famous attractions are in fact archaeological sites, such as the Forum and the Colosseum, drawing a frantic 4 million visitors yearly. Such touristic flows do not only strengthen the city’s economic system – they also define the priorities of its strategic development.149 As a result, the main target of the city promotion institutions and brand producers is the external audience: the tourists and investors bringing the financial capital to the city. This focus assures that the primary interest for the city’s evolution is linked to the creation and maintenance of tourist attractions, and only secondarily enhancing the liveability of the residential areas. In favour of the solemn and “monumentalising” image of the urban, one might ask if Rome has not come very far from the ideals and endeavors of Mussolini: indeed, much of the archaeological remains exposed as part of the Fascist movement were absorbed seamlessly into the tourist itinerary, with no reference as to how and why they assumed their current appearance and form.150 Yet, they continue to reflect the official, historical, elite constructions of national identity.151 Valerie Higgins argues that the ideological implications of the archaeological excavations and interventions are hidden in plain sight – obvious for those who are interested, but easily overlooked by the less curious, and underplayed by those who prefer not to think of their political undertones. Higgins calls out the current administration of the “apparent collective amnesia that baulks at openly acknowledging the full extent of fascist appropriation of Rome’s heritage.”152 Once part of a patriotic programme in the creation of a national identity, the same simplified image of Rome is now marketed to its visitors. The large archaeological sites in the heart of the city, cleared out and assembled by the architects of Mussolini, are increasingly cut out from the continuum of urban commons: many of these archaeological sites were in fact an accessible continuation of the public realm only a few decades ago. Now they occupy vast areas in the core of Rome’s urban configuration, eliminating the street space for pedestrians and blocking the circulation of the city.

The problematic aspects of tourism and urban gentrification go far beyond the concerns around aesthetics or identity politics – like in so many other metropolitan cities around the world, these controversies eventually come down to a battle of space to live. As the central areas have been deliberately refurbished for touristic programmes, local settlements have been pushed ever further towards the periphery, and the few who can still afford to live in the city find their habitat increasingly diminished. The external orientation in defining the city’s image and the direction of its urban development leaves the locals with a passive role in the creation and

149

Dobosh 2017, p. 194-196.

Higgins 2018, p. 292.

151 Waterton 2013, p. 72.

152 Higgins 2018, p. 289.

150

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appropriation of the city, as their needs and feelings are rarely listened to. As one might expect, this development has engendered an increased awareness and critique of the commodification of Roman habitations and built heritage – the alternatives for this narrative, however, must today be sought further than the public programme.

Lost in mediation An encounter with a foreign culture is often an encounter with the perceived sense of place, with its myth and imaginaries, to which built heritage contributes its validating materialisms, its physical evidence of hereness153 and its tokens of authenticity.154 Marketing strategies for the promotion of cities use attractive symbols and images to entice the targeted audiences, and marketers are above all focused on producing clear and memorable names, logos and slogans – not necessarily in promoting autentic and reliable, let alone complex historical information.155 The visitors, to a surprising degree, seem content with performing the assigned ritual of the must-see’s and must-do’s: queuing for hours to take a portrait at the Colosseum or St. Peter’s basilica, buying a souvernir or postcard and ‘sharing’ their itinerary through social media. The history of the city is accumulated in the walking tours “Rome in a day” or “Rome sightseeing”.156 The experience differs little from one monument to another – the proceeding of the visit is quite the same at a marketplace, a church or an arena built for the public slaughter of humans and animals.

Thus, it is not only the added layers of history that have been erased of the commodified ancient monuments, but even their initial purpose – the one enhanced by elaborate guidance and design – is often blurred in the process. Rather than engaging with it, visitors make use of the urban framework with its buildings as a splendid theatrical backdrop, worth but fleeting attention.157 The banality of the Carnival, once critically employed by the Italian postmodern, is now exercised on a daily basis at the main tourist attractions of the city in the form of dressed-up gladiators, street vendors, never-ending wedding photoshoots and the mindless reproduction of iconic images. This carnival of repetition, however, has little to do with a conscious or critical reappropriation of the past.

An eloquent commentary of the contemporary mutation of ancient iconography was displayed at the Biennale in Venice 2017, where the humorous three-channel video piece, David, explored the incomprehensible modern phenomenona surrounding Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo. The Chinese artist Guan Xiao pieced popular imagery together with YouTube videos shot by tourists who were more concerned with documenting their art pilgrimage than having any cultural insight to the sculpture’s significance. Th e vi deo montage presents the imaginative ways in which the statue of David exists in a modern-day context, from mass produced commercial goods to its celebrity-like status.158 Engendered by the absurd, endless reproduction of the iconic image that conceals any meaning it has once borne, the impression of an insurmountable distance between the work and the spectator is a central theme in Xiao’s piece.

153 154 155 156 157 158

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1988, p. 153.

The sense of historicity is enhanced by various mnemonic strategies: imitation of the past by enacting historical events and organising thematic or commemorative fests. Dobosh 2017, p. 193-196.

Dobosh 2017, p. 191.

Dobosh 2017, p. 196.

Zimmermann & Hofmann 2017, p. 11.

Interview with Guan Xiao in Vice 21.8.2017.

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Commodified heritage – historicity as a tourist attraction

(above) Army cars and tourist buses in the city’s desert centre surrounding the main arcaheological sites. (left) Visitor groups at the Roman Forum.

Xiao’s work observes the overpowering cultural imagery from a clarifying distance, outlining by the means of art and humour the precise phenomena that surround all canonised historical objects exhausting the original artwork, its context and meaning. It offers a simultaneously hysterical and melancholic view of the ‘heritage’ whose meaning seems irreversibly lost in translation. In a karaoke-like tone, Xiao sings over the video clips in broken English – complemented with Chinese subtitles – her lyrics playfully questioning the collective cultural memory: “Sculpturing him, drawing him, reproducing him / Precisely / But we just don’t know how to see him / Don’t know why we watching”.

As demonstrated by the protagonists of the Italian avant-garde some decades ago, overturns of identities, quotations, or even parodical cultural loans could make irony a means to emancipate a collective imagination still trapped in the rigours of ill-mediated history.

However, as imitation and reproduction of historical emblems is increasingly employed by the global economy, the critical use of these techniques requires a closer analysis.

Following the famous theory of Walter Benjamin,159 who professed that the aura of a work of art is devalued in the process of mechanical reproduction, Chris Rojek160 proposes that the meaning, originality and uniqueness of historical sites can be irreversibly lost in the process of their branding – the production of images, films, remakes, souvenirs and other products, even texts. The original is thus, in a sense, always ‘corrupted’ or mediated by its reproductions.

159 160

Benjamin 1969.

Rojek 1997.

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Controversies in conservation

(above) Visitors at the Roman Forum. (left) Crowds queuing for the Colosseum.

As the loss of memory reaches the size of the city, replicas of entire historical centers demonstrate the extent of this phenomenon. The historical centres of Rome, Florence and Venice, once conquered by the means of speculative, ephemeral and spectacular urban reconfigurations, now find their banal copies and remakes all around the globe: a mall in Macau built within the framework of a cheap replica of the Colosseum, the upscale shopping district Florentia Village in China – which, in an eclectic mix of styles, also flaunts a “Grand Canal” – and the numerous remakes of the Venetian lagoon.161 These heritage sites now sprout up as empty stages, repeatable playgrounds in unrecognisable contexts all around the world. The ever more artificial construction and commodification of the urban and its imaginaries thus puts into question the very meanings that can be referred to with the term ‘local identity’.162

161

To preserve its main industry, Venice must preserve its historical identity: “Venice is too small, too slow, too inefficient, it is losing its inhabitants and its authentic civil life; it is ultra-violated, ultra-exposed and it is sinking. However, the idea of ​​Venice is more fascinating than ever, and if modernity has threatened its physical existence, at the same time it has provided endless ways to reproduce on a global scale”.

These reflections recount the results of the Chain City project, presented at the 11th Venice International Architecture Exhibition. Reproducing a gondola trip among the copies of the lagoon city, the project bears witness to a fictitious reality, indifferent to the geography and authenticity of the built environment. Out there: architecture beyond building, Marsilio, Venezia 2008, p. 55.

162 Fava 2017. p. 40.

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Commodified heritage – historicity as a tourist attraction

The law of demand Ironically, the original monuments are increasingly dependent on the sponsorship of the international companies, too. For the last decade, Rome has faced enormous challenges connected to its financial management, geopardising any efforts in urban planning, maintenance or preservation.163 With more Unesco World Heritage sites than any other country, recession-hit Italy is struggling to finance their daily upkeep, let alone full-blown restoration. 164 Companies ranging from Italian fashion houses to a Japanese mattress manufacturer have paid for numerous restorations including the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the pyramid of Caius Cestius.165 It is often suggested, that the financial capital provided by tourism is essential for the preservation of historical environments. Nevertheless, the urban design strategy that is targeted to serve heritage tourism, rather than the local conditions of sustainable urbanity, raises questions about the legitimacy of the administration of public space. Musealisation of ancient artifacts is thus not mere ”preservation” – from an urban point of view it is often the catalyst for gentrification and displacement. The city of Rome is in the middle of a pressure conflict where the historical scenery is marketed for an international audience in hope of financial gains, while the monuments demand greater efforts for their preservation in the increasingly crowded city. Simultaneously, the infrastructure must be maintained to accommodate ever larger flows of visitors.

In a retrospective book published after the ‘ephemeral’ years of Estate Romana, Renato Nicolini proposes that the problem of Rome is not, in fact, the excess of tourist demand, but rather the scarcity of demand for any other form of culture than those promoted for their touristic potential. In the words of Nicolini, “the enemy of our historical and artistic patrimony, of our cultural heritage, is not the excess of (tourist) demand. -- In fact, the problem we are facing stems from the scarcity of demand. The only demand that has grown is the one for cultural tourism. The only one, I repeat - while the demand for any other dimension of cultural heritage remain substantially repressed: that of their use for educational purposes, whether it be for scholastic training or for lifelong learning; that of their use for research purposes; that of the restoration. While it is unrealistic to simply propose to redistribute the demand that threatens to suffocate the city of art - without adopting substantially authoritarian or discriminatory solutions - it is reasonable to think that an increase in other types of demand would influence the uneven concentration of demand for the tourist-cultural use.”166

163

The city’s bankruptcy was avoided only recently by the intervention of the Italian state. Lehner 2017, p. 222.

The monuments exposed in the 1930’s have suffered hugely from the effects of pollution and vibration excarbated by the heavy traffic on the grand avenues built along them (the Aurelian Wall alike). Many current debates about the reconfiguration of these areas have their genesis in the 1980s.

165 Artnet 4.11.2015.

166 Nicolini 1987, p. 284-287.

164

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Controversies in conservation

The northern towers of the wall were employed as studios and work spaces well into the 20th century, but after decades of abandonment they are now quickly deteriorating, The roof of one tower crashed down in the summer 2018.

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Urban ruinscapes – conserving the Aurelian Wall

5.2 Urban ruinscapes – conserving the Aurelian Wall Although initiatives for the preservation and research of the ancient artifacts are manifold across Rome and Italy today, the “scarcity of demand” manifests itself in the degradation of the numerous historical artifacts that have not passed the process of touristic commodifications.

The Aurelian Wall is among the most significant examples highlighting the limited instruments currently available for reusing or redeveloping historical monuments within the urban sphere: As the wall, for the first time in millenia, is not in use, and its additional programmes and functions are dying out, damages to the structure are incremental.

The modest showpieces in the Wall’s contemporary configuration, Museo delle Mura, Museo Storico dei Bersaglieri and Museo della Via Ostiense do not appear as profitable endeavors with few visitors, unambitious exhibitions and minimal opening hours. The rather uneventful museums’ sole purpose seems to be the access to the magnificent space itself, including hardly any added artistic or educational content. Museo delle Mura, located further from the centre, even includes some additional towers and sentry passages, and reveals some fantastic views above the walls into the calm, green landscapes surrounding the southern stretch of the wall.

The interiors, however, reveal less of the original interior atmospheres, details or building techniques, as all surfaces and much of the layout of the towers were elaborately renewed during the 20th century. The same accounts for much of the poorly lit, underwhelming rooms inside the other renovated sections of the wall.

However, these few accessible sections of the wall testify of the ‘monumentalising’ logic of preservation, which stems from the external orientation of the representation of urban history.

The expansive network of museums and museum-objects across the city has perhaps reached its current saturation point – an environment that is impossible to change invites to destroy it.

The repertoire of historical typologies is more deprived than ever, causing loss of important cultural heritage. While a few monuments are successfully capitalised on, and thus laborously maintained as testimonies of the past, others – like the wall – are falling into disrepair.

The Aurelian Wall challenges the paradigms of architectural conservation: the contemporary Western concept of preservation, which emphasises the age and authenticity of the material in quest of the ‘original’ form.167 Due to the continuous readjusments of its exterior, as well as its enormous length and complexity, archaeological syntheses on the fabric of the wall have proven difficult, receiving relatively little scholarly attention. The surface of the Aurelian Wall, reflecting the eventful history of the city for over 17 centuries, is a mosaic puzzled together from various reused building blocks, and each square meter of the wall’s surface is a historic patchwork of older and newer traces. If the wall’s archaeological categorisation seems incomprehensible, so does its architectural typology. The divisive element has swiftly turned into a platform to build upon – even a spontaneous shelter.

Unlike many other significant monuments of late antiquity, the Aurelian Wall remains a curiously uncultivated object, seamlessly attached to the street grid, bracing residential buildings of all ages and often bordering the busy motorways that circle around the city. It describes the stratification of Roman urbanity with a precision that no other architectural element can compete. In stark contrast to its original, authoritarian role dividing the city, the wall now reflects the organic ‘spacialisation’168 of local identities, describing the old Roman ”The contemporary Western paradigm for heritage protection is based on the value of authenticity.Without the authentic, original material, scientific research is impossible.” Lind 2017, p. 14 168 See Lefebvre 2001.

167

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Controversies in conservation

tradition of reappropriating the elements of the historical city. However, in its ongoing, accelerating process of ruination it may – if not reinhabited by the citizens – be soon lost as a potential space in the city. In ruin, it can no longer accommodate the unsolicited programmes needed in the metropolis – it will be banished into the space of memory.

In recent years, there has been increased interest for the wall’s conservation. Far from Rome’s busy center, some relatively intact stretches of the wall have been framed with green plazas, benches and walkways, and purged of ‘unnecessary’ additions. The structure has been weeded of unruly vegetation and some of the stonework has been repaired to hinder the process of ruination. Thus, having survived as a shapeshifting urban organism, the Aurelian Wall is now being framed as militant architecture – the original monument. The few renewal projects supported by the authorities are all saturated with notions of power, tranquility and a certain timelessness – these are images that are devoid of people, the objects’s envisioned historical role providing the assumed orthodoxy.169 They are committed to one version of heritage: 20th century renovations, the added ‘human’ histories, the innovative and messy reappropriations and parasitic additions of the wall, or the scarcity that often lead to such interventions, do not rate a mention.

Preserving the transient As the growing urge to archiving and “musealising” historical artifacts illustrates the increased awareness and economic interest around tokens of history, the concept of permanence is often considered the uncontested value of architecture – one that should not be mixed with the currents of everyday life. The continuity of the historical city is entrusted to an image that, to keep the main industry active, freezes any possibility of transformation. According to Federica Fava this immobility demonstrates a quality common to contemporary cities, whose “real vitality is often threatened by the need to promote urban scenarios inherited from history, homologated in the -land of entertainment.”170 According to the myth, architecture, at the highest, holds the power to defend us from the terror of time: “In the greatest of buildings time stands firmly still.”171 Without a doubt, there is something deeply moving, even terrifying, about the passing of time, and it is perhaps the very same emotions of nostalgia evoken in us by the crumbling ruins, that forces us to chase the ‘timeless’. In the words of Hannah Arendt, “the reality and reliability of the human world rests primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they are produced.” This aim for timelessness – or eternity – has arguably been the goal of architecture since its very conception. “Architecture is not only about domesticating space,” writes Karsten Harries, “it is also a deep defense against the terror of time. The language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality.”172 At the same time, the notions of beauty, melancholy and loss are inevitably intertwined: in the words of Juhani Pallasmaa, “a sense of melancholy lies beneath all moving experiences of art; this is the sorrow of beauty’s immaterial temporality. Art projects an unattainable ideal, the ideal of beauty that momentarily touches the eternal.”173 While the pursuit of beauty is often described as an attempt to touch the ‘eternal’, real experiences can only emerge in fleeting moments, stirred by temporary things. There is a tendency to decay inherent in materials 169

Waterton 2013, p. 71.

Fava 2017, p. 41.

171 Pallasmaa 2005, p. 56 172 Harries 1982, p. 59-69.

173 Pallasmaa 2005, p. 58 170

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Urban ruinscapes – conserving the Aurelian Wall

(above) A popular marketplace by the wall. (right) Next to Porta Tiburtina the wall is fully integrated with dwellings, and the curtains on the former outside of the wall perforated by windows.

and systems themselves: an entropy, that no amount of care in design or maintenance can overcome. 174 In architecture, however, this collision of material with time is often described as a fight: “the confrontation of a precise form with time and the elements, a confrontation, which lasted until the form was destroyed in the process of this combat.”175 Eager to take part in this battle are the advocates of various disciplines including archaeologists, conservation specialists, urbanists, architects, activists, investors, and the numerous agencies connected to tourism – and, of course, the local communities. These perspectives, however, often contradict each other. The values and methods for preserving, framing and reappropriating historical buildings and monuments are under constant revision: the ‘romantic’, aesthetical approach to historical structures suggests the opposite actions to archaeological restoration, and the reuse of the building poses yet another significantly contrasting proposition. In her dissertation Tuija Lind explores the problemacy of ruin conservation: “How to preserve the transient?”176 The reuse of a building is often a reason to maintain it and save it from deterioration – thus a temperate conservation of the structure could in many cases bring the building back to use, and preserve it as an architectural presence in the city. Nevertheless, fixing a historical building with new material would obtrude the archaeological information that it conceals. In order to 174

Lebbeus Woods, 9.7.2012.

Rossi 1981, p. 2.

176 Lind 2017, p. 14.

175

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stop the process of ruination and to protect the authentic, archaeological material, it would arguably be best to construct a shelter to protect the remaining structure from the weather, remove vegetation and enclose the area with a fence. Visitors should be guided to ensure their safety and to prevent erosion. However, in many cases – with the Aurelian Wall for instance – such elaborate protection would not be sensible nor feasible.

The problems of preservative actions, especially when they concern ruins, thus reach beyond the reduced usability of the strictly conserved structures, as they may tamper with the essential character, aesthetic and meaning of historical objects: that of the transcendental, decaying presence, and the associations that this aura brings about in the human psyche. According to the romantic ideal, the power of a ruin is in its very process of decay, and thus this should not be hindered: stones ought to fall, ivy could grow, and in time, the man-made construction would be swallowed by nature. As Georg Simmel noted: “the aesthetic value of the ruin combines the disharmony, the eternal becoming of the soul struggling against itself, with the satisfaction of form, the firm limitedness of the work of art.”177 The Roman architect and inventor of many classical codes of architecture, Vitruvius, famously articulated that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, stability, utility, and beauty. These objectives were adjusted by Tuija Lind, accompanying the classical criteria of beauty and longevity with narratio, to emphasise the narrative and educational dimensions of built heritage. Illustrating the complex character of the Aurelian Wall, as it ambiguously alternates between a building and a ruin, one must ask: which use, and which narrative, to enhance?178 If perceived as a building, the wall’s maintenance and use are crucial – if viewed as an ancient ruin, its value within the cityscape is in the various stories it can convey, its poetic image and historical cogency.

177 178

Georg Simmel 1919 in Lopes 2015, p. 39.

The differentiation of a ‘building’ and a ‘ruin’ is often defined by the use of the building – even more so than the decay of its structure. Many of the fairly modest remains of ancient theatres are still called theatres if they continue to be in use as such, whereas rather undamaged fortifications and triumphal arches are often perceived as ruins, if they are no longer guarded by watchmen or passed through by military parades. Lind 2017, p. 18, 31.

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Urban ruinscapes – conserving the Aurelian Wall

Atmospheric ruin gardens by the Aurelian Wall in Testaccio..

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Spaces of possibility

The continuous, arched walkways of the Aurelian Wall unveil yet unexplored spatial potential.

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Other timescapes – between the eternal and the ephemeral city

6 Spaces of possibility 6.1 Other timescapes – between the eternal and the ephemeral city “Present-day happenings are simply the most conspicuous sections of a continuum; they are like that small series of wavelengths between the ultra-violet and infra-red which translate themselves into colors visible to the human eye.”179 The history of Rome is not linear: it is cyclical, and its time has progressed in pulsations and recessions. Thus its cityscape – perhaps more so than any other – seems to overlook the present in favour of what once was, simultaneously elaborating what might come to be.

Rome, since antiquity, was a symbol as much as it was a place, reflecting what it aspires to be alongside the countless variations in which it emerged in the past. This cycle of abandonment and rediscovery manifested in the various references to history in both evolutionary and revolutionary architecture - from the collages of fragments of Roman architecture reused as spolia in the construction or decoration of new buildings to the renaissance itself. 180 In its most advanced efforts, Rome echoed its own history: if the transformative political emergence of the Italian state and the subsequent nationalisms, or the wake of the touristic brand-Rome all found their paragon in history, then so did the opposing revolution of the Roman avant-garde and the wake of the ephemeral city.

Ruinscapes illustrate the perpetual, unexpected, non-linear nature of time. A void is a place of tension: of both longing and expectation. “We live all the patterns of time simultaneously,” says the Italian sociologist Alberto Melucci, “the recurring circle of memory and project, the linear projection of the arrow as an intention and a goal, the exalted condensation of the point, or the experience of losing ourselves in disconnected fragments. It is often difficult to reconcile these patterns, since each one of them brings us to the borders of the others.”181 Thus, witnessing the decay of the ‘permanent’ object brings us to the notion of the momentary. The monument, as an archive of indefinitely accumulating time, in juxtaposition with the festival, that is linked to time in its most flowing, transitory and precarious aspect, present the polar ends of the durational spectrum of spatial occupation. Yet, these two opposites approach each other in a curious way. They are, as stated by Foucault, other timescapes, heterochronies - “outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages”, simultaneously abolishing and rediscovering time.182 Indeed, the ‘eternal’ city has long been the stage for the ephemeral, too. Centuries before Estate Romana and the Italian postmodern, the spectacle of momentary urbanism emerged in the Baroque period, as wealthy patrons commissioned ephemeral creations from wellknown artists of the time. Much like the ephemeral urbanism of the 20th century, the baroque architects gained wide recognition for their wizardry in combining art and architecture, rapidly transforming the scale and character of public space. The elaborate creations, often very expensive and time-consuming, were only used for the single event before being dismantled or destroyed. One such work was Gianlorenzo Bernini’s temporary volcano placed on the predecessor of Rome’s Spanish steps, which took three months to create and was destroyed in a firework display over the course of an hour.183 But if Italians were the first to invent the 179

Giedion 1962, p. 7.

Venturi 1966, p. 44.

181 Melucci 1996, p. 12.

182 Foucault 1986.

183 Inglese & Ippolito 2018, p. 153-155.

180

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Spaces of possibility

“ephemeral”, they were also the first to know that there is no such thing: As a thought lingers in perpetual movement, the ‘momentary’, in human perception, does not exist. In essence, the creations’ demise was the climax of the event – thus, they were relocated in the space of memory as testimonies of a collective immaterial culture.

The dimensions of history and potential are crucial factors in investigating urban transformation processes. Much like ruins and other sites of transience, temporal structures present an architectural process not to be completed, but continued, thus unfolding as a potential catalyst for change. The Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti calls for a study of these interrelations within the urban environment, as a place where ”historical space is no longer in perspective, in which time cannot be conceived as a uniform succession, and the placing of values is not permanently tied to some immovable fact”. Thus, the ”phenomenon is being defined not only by a particular historical location, but also by the memory of having been, and by the possibility of being next.”184 This task is what he defines as ”the search for the essence of architecture.”

As the litterateur and scholar Jason Rhys Parry points out, human beings “are seasoned veterans of the virtual. No other known species has plunged so deeply into or has so greatly enriched this space of possibility”. 185 In the urban sphere, history and possibility both exist virtually, and thereby draw their power to frame and affect the actual.186 Although the ephemeral fevers occupy physical space only temporarily, they continue to occupy the mental, perceived space – the threads of memory that they leave behind bind existing sites with new connotations and meanings. In the words of Juhani Pallasmaa, “we do not live in an objective material world.

We live in mental worlds in which the experienced, remembered and dreamed, as well as the present, past and future, constantly fuse into one another. We transform time and space through imagination and dreaming, into the specific human mode of existence – the world of possibilities.“187 Defining the sphere of the imaginable is the first stage of a dream, a plan or a design.

Dimensions of decay Ruins and temporary structures possess a special understanding of time’s passing, both finding their own way around the battle of time. Ruins find their redemption through surrender, gaining a new essence and reasoning in the process of their transformation. The ephemeral gently steps aside before putting up a fight. Thus they find their place in the thick of time – not in a world of static objects but in that of social and temporal exchanges. Much like other temporal architectures, the un-becoming of a ruin draws its image in the mind’s eye.

Reminding us of our own transience, a ruin calls us to dream and to remember – perhaps not the exact extent of its blurred contours, but the moment, the impression, the encounter.

These imperfect, incomplete, broken and illusionary fragments of the built environment are important components of narration. They connect people, places, histories and futures.188 Although the concept of the romantic, ‘natural’ ruin in a contemporary city seems to be something of an oxymoron, the notion reifies the abstract, personal and associative ways of experiencing history – something to be discovered – as opposed to the scientific, educational and ‘monumental’ qualities highlighted in the cultivated ‘heritage sites’. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the uncontested portrayist of the Roman ruinscapes, pronounced already in 1762: 184

Gregotti 1966, p. 139.

Parry 2017, p. 126.

186 Parry 2017, p. 126.

187 Pallasmaa 1998, p. 54.

188 Pizzagalli 2013.

185

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Other timescapes – between the eternal and the ephemeral city

Old stone and young ivy.

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Spaces of possibility

”These speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings, even such as those of the immortal Palladio, could never have succeeded in conveying.”189 The views of the crippling remains of antiquity, overgrown with ivy, are a cross between immaculate archaeology and surrealist vision, depicting the essence of Rome’s undiscovered monuments from the Aurelian Wall to the Roman baths.

In Manfredo Tafuri’s analysis, the etchings of Piranesi capture something relevant to the portrayal of Rome in a larger context: “Since Roman antiquity is not only a recollecton imbued with nostalgic ideologies and revolutionary expectations, but also a myth to be contested, all forms of classical derivations are treated as mere fragments, as deformed symbols, as hallucinating organisms of an ‘order’ in state of decay”.190 .Piranesi himself stated that his engravings of the ruined monuments of ancient Rome were intended to dethrone the ‘mediocrity of contemporary architecture’ with an accurate record of Rome’s glorious past: “It was not possible to find things more modern than those of the ancient, against the rigid laws of architecture.”191 His famous etchings introduce us to a Rome before its modern reconstruction, an abandoned, glorious scenery of phantasmagoric romanticism, of eternal grandeur and decay, of enormous, overscaled buildings and vast panoramas. Ruins were thus an escape from the shortcomings of ‘modernity’ well before the 20th century.

In contrast to the touristic archaeological attractions, the less established, ‘natural’ ruinscapes still demonstrate this imagination-stirring, emotionally engaging potential. Upon walking the streets of Rome, especially the unrefined sites within its historical quarters, one frequently discovers stories, immaculately absorbed and reproduced by local people, about the historical genesis of the surroundings. Personal memories blend with historical information and common legends in a fascinating way, the knowledge of history being a key element of the culture, education and identity of contemporary Romans. These encounters and shared spatial experiences promote a knowledge and understanding of the environment, simultaneously passed on to future generations.

Beyond the transcendental atmospheres, the built environment and urban configuration can either accommodate or suffocate this organic process of meaning-making – by, for example, enhancing the living conditions of local communities, enabling the access to historical sites for natural passing and encounter, and by promoting their engagement in everyday activities instead of ritualistic ’sightseeing’. This emotional dimension of living – essentially, the urge to belong to a community – is known to economists for the attractive power it generates on space, echoing the individual’s will to become an active part in a tale of extraordinary events.192 The site is no longer just a representation: it becomes reality, unveiling the potential of the collective conscious in constructing the city as an atmospheric, authentic and tangible entity – a living organism, where every new event contains within it a memory of the past and a potential memory of the future. 193 If, as Lefebvre suggests, ”with the advent of modernity, time has vanished from social space” then we must find ways of reintroducing it: these traces give us in the present a grip of the past and of the future, impossible for static and complete things. 194 189 190 191 192 193

194

Piranesi 1762.

Tafuri 1976, p. 14.

Piranesi 1762, p. 2.

Fava 2017, p.22.

Rossi, too, underlines the importance of the personal experiences and impressions that emerge in urban historical sites: “We might discuss what our idea of the building is, our most general memory of it as a product of the collective, and what relationship it affords us with this collective -- There are people who do not like a place because it is associated with some ominous moment in their lives; others attribute an auspicious character to a place. ” Rossi 1982a, p. 29, 60 Till 2009, p. 96.

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Elaborating upon ruins as a space of potential rather than a mere romantic coulisse in the landscape, one must ask whether the moving dimension of ruinscapes in fact stems from their very abandonment, vacancy, and perceived availability for reassimilation. Albeit seemingly filled with abscence, the emptiness of these buildings also means possibility – at the very least, some fresh air to breathe midst the otherwise asphyxilating landscape of the corporate city.195 These are spaces that seem obsolete at the moment, and thus project strong ties to the site’s history, as well as its future. The voids contain all the latent qualities of a space – as though waiting for their discovery, they are charged with dormant potentiality, especially for civil initiatives and non-institutionalised groups.196 The urban void as a social condenser The Italian urbanist Bernardo Secchi discusses the character of these voids as a substrate for the emergent, marginal functions. The vacant structures open possibilities for new ways of self-organised, collective space production, that can add value to the social integration of the city.197 In Rome, ruins – like the Aurelian Wall – have often acted as a mediator between the contradicting urbanities of the ’monumental city’ and the simultaneously flourishing, informal ’self-made city’. Nowadays, however, such independent products and producents of local identity can often only survive for a limited time before they are overruled or swallowed by the official institutions or real estate developments. Thus the urban voids may reveal their darker side, as citizens are affected by security issues related to the abandoned surroundings, lack of local activities and the poor quality of unmaintained public space.198 Entering a dialogue with other disciplines and forms of art, and most importantly with the local community, can help specify the objectives and tools of revitalisation processes. As stated by Henri Lefebvre, “(social) space is a (social) product”. The brackets disclose his key message: public and communal spaces are produced through a complex set of overlapping societal agencies. Interactive spaces can only be created through a process of interaction, referring not only to the process of collaborative design, but to the phenomenological, representational, conceptual, political and economic agencies that set the context to a given project. By elaborating upon the layers of the built environment and by mapping the voids within the existing infrastructure, architects and designers can visualize the relations of history and potential in the urban sphere and thereby develop strategies that incorporate process and time as crucial elements of space production. This approach is based on the notion of space as relational, and the urban as a product of interrelations between different dimensions of space and time.199 While the central areas of Rome have, during the last decades, increasingly specialised in the official programmes of the tourist-staged museum-land, a few independent social and cultural initiatives have found their seedbed in the remote residential neighbourhoods, the quartieri.

Here, the country’s financial struggles and growing unemployment rates are manifested in large abandoned properties, factories and public facilities. Reappropriations of the built environment for different needs, such as housing, social centers or cultural activities, are widespread. It is in the daily life of the quartieri where the negotiations of spaces and inclusion in the form of selforganised projects by the inhabitants can be analyzed and learned from.200 195 196 197 198 199 200

Brighenti 2013, xvii.

Lehner 2017, p. 211.

Secchi 1989, p. 61-64.

Lehner 2017, p. 222.

Lehner 2017, p. 225.

Lehner 2017, p. 223.

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While the grandeur of the early avant-gardes is long gone, the societal catalysm is still there: the lively public debate revolves around the themes of the city and the search for alternative solutions that could add value to urban living conditions and the use of public space. There are, for instance, civil initiatives that aim to occupy the vacant spaces in order to create awareness and to increase the pressure on the municipality to provide necessary services. One such endeavor was the library Moby Dick, a former public bath in Garbatella, where the vacant building was taken over by a civil organisaton, claiming it to be converted into a public library.

As a result of lengthy negotiations, the neighbourhood initiative eventually gained permission and funding for the library.201 Another significant intervention was the occupation of the old sausage factory Fiorucci in 2009.

The vacant building, located in the quarter of Tor Sapienza, was turned into the residential complex Metropoliz, providing housing solutions for around 200 migrant family members. In exchange, the city gained a new cultural center: the self-organised social project merges with a collaborative artistic programme. The artistic interventions facilitated by the initiative’s own gallery, also located in the factory, are likely to complicate potential attempts of eviction, and exemplify the added social value of the project.202 These examples illustrate some of the ways in which the vacant urban structures have contributed to the lack of collective spaces in Rome. While the administration of residential neighbourhoods generally tolerates, to some degree, the occupation and reappropriation of vacant structures, occasionally even encouraging civil initiatives, the inhabitants of these spaces often face the constant threat of eviction. Although these initiatives and the respective communities are especially vulnerable to the threats posed by gentrification and real estate developments, they show that the continuous creation and redefinition of public and communal spaces can be the regenerative motor of urban vitality and continuity.

Time, space and power The current initiatives in the outskirts of Rome indicate a positive shift in urban paradigms with the active engagement and inclusion of citizens in local revitalisation projects and decisionmaking processes. Furthermore, the spread of recycling – or up-cycling – strategies on a global scale now tells of a desire to ‘recharge’ existing spatial components and resources through functional changes203. Simultaniously, however, the concepts and strategies employed for the historical city and the contemporary city seem to drift ever further apart. While the grass-roots initiatives have managed to gain ground in the suburbs, the central areas of Rome, especially those belonging to the historical city, have increasingly rejected the needs of their residents in favour of the nostalgic image. Thus, its countless cultural institutions have largely reverted to the repetitive programmes curated for outsiders. The rare positive examples of reviving the social and cultural dimensions of the old monuments have revolved around marketing the already established, popular historical artifacts, such as the Colosseum, and relieving the difficult road traffic of the monumental centre.204 Although temporary reassimilations flourish in the messy suburbs of all Western capitals, the isolating glass placed between the objects of history and their urban surroundings perhaps demonstrates the contemporary “terror of time”. In his book Liquid Modernity Zygmunt Bauman discusses the convoluted historical fate of the distinction between the durable and the transient. Durable objects are meant to be preserved for a long, long time; they come as close 201

Lehner 2017, p. 223.

Lehner 2017, p. 223.

203 Fava 2017, p. 33.

202

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204

as possible to embody and tokenize the otherwise abstract and ethereal notion of eternity. In fact, it is from the postulated or projected antiquity that the image of ‘eternity’ is extrapolated. Thus, durability is not only an ethereal aspiration in art, but in fact projects power: “those people near the top … can ensure that their own objects are always durable, and those of others transient.”205 Throughout human history the work of culture consisted of sifting and sedimenting hard kernels of perpetuity out of transient human lives and fleeting human actions, in conjuring up duration out of transience, continuity out of discontinuity, and in transcending thereby the limits imposed by human mortality by deploying mortal men and women in the service of the immortal human species. 206 Even if the demand for such work is nowadays shrinking, as we can judge from certain grandiose schemes currently developed in China, Qatar or Dubai, monumental architecture can still be best produced without the hindrance of human rights or democratic processes. In the attempt of immortality, the life of a human matters little. The time of an individual is that of the ephemeral.

Indeed, the landmarks of the less fortunate tend to be of a momentary kind – light, movable, unstable and easy to disassemble. Perhaps even that ability to make objects durable, to amass them, keep them, insure against their theft and spoliation, best of all monopolize them, is what puts people ‘near the top’. Durable objects are assigned special value and are cherished and coveted thanks to their association with immortality – that ultimate value, ‘naturally’ desired and requiring no argument or persuasion to be embraced. The opposite of ‘durable’ objects are ‘transient’ ones, meant to be used up – consumed – and to disappear in the process of their consumption. 207 The connection between duration and power in the urban sphere is still evident: even the weakest can assume space, but only the strong can maintain it. Thus, it is easy to undermine the transformative qualities of temporary interventions. Yet, the events of Estate Romana and some of its contemporary successors are a testimony to the sustainability of an approach which, by establishing temporal products, can support the activation of the existing, unfolding new layers of meaning within the familiar environment.

204

For instance, with the recent restoration works of the Colosseum, the arena’s long vanished floor is intended to be replaced with one that could support modern-day entertainment. According to the culture minister Dario Franceschini, the stage would be used for “cultural events of the highest level”. Right by the Colosseum, the negotiations around the future of Mussolini’s infamous highway Via dei Fori Imperiali, located at the center of Rome’s Imperial Forums, are still ongoing. The issues related to logistics represent one of the main urgencies in central Rome, as the intense vehicular traffic threatens both the conservation of monuments and the safety and comfort of pedestrians. The pedestrianization and reconfiguration of the area was already advocated by Giulio Carlo Argan during his mayorship, and piloted at the Cinema of Maxentius in the late 1970’s. Now the city is finally taking action: the area has benefited from a recent city ordinance forbidding private cars on the boulevard, and on weekends only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed on the street.

205 Bauman 2000, p. 125 206 Bauman 2000, p. 126 207 Bauman 2000. p. 126

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6.2 Experimental environments and temporary solutions “Obsessed with purity and permanence, we must learn to perish, learn to see the continuities in the flux, the trajectories and and the unfoldings. These traces give us a present hold of the past and the future, as unmoving, unmixed things do not.” 208 The ephemeral can be an agile tool in formulating fl uid identities, microdemocracies bu ilt upon the needs of the present. By occupying a space for a determined time such initiatives can generate cruces that question urban inequalities, the right to space, and the legitimisation of urban management – opposing them with tangible models of alternatives. The inert processes and hierarchies of the urban can be contested through temporary interventions, drawing attention to the obvious social issues that are usually surrounded by a silent hopelessness.

Because of their short duration, temporary structures are always experienced as fresh – thus, they can accommodate messages infused with the kind of idealism or irony that permanent buildings reject. They have the ability to present urban space as a stage for societal debate, to make visible the political valencies of public space.

Here, perhaps, lies the hidden power of the ephemeral – in which many contemporary ‘pop-up’ programmes fall short. Ephemeral enables the kind of cultural, urban, political and structural interventions and commentaries that the economic and bureaucratic structures of modern metropolises would not otherwise allow. It is a platform for groups with more ideas than resources, for the generation, who can’t afford to own - only to borrow. The obvious catalytic potential held by these initiatives challenges the hermetism of traditional urban planning, offering an opportunity to redesign maps of knowledge, to reconnect the dimensions and elements of the existing. Thus, they may be able to shape the development of the larger whole, indicating a ‘relational value’ beyond the concrete limits of the intervention itself.“209 As all events, constructions and art works eventually perish, the understanding of the “ephemeral” should perhaps be less about the duration of the piece, but of what the temporary framework enables, and the unique sensitivity it evokes in the beholder. In the words of Renato Nicolini, “The ephemeral event is one that leaves signs in our memory, in our emotions, in our passions.

I think it is necessary to accept the fact that our life is ephemeral, that things change, to be able to maintain a sense of meaning.”210 Although today these artistic avant-gardes already present the relics of history themselves, they can act as an example of a sustainable reversibility, an ambitious attempt to combine the efforts of the preservation and the revitalisation of the city. Compared to the times of Estate Romana four decades ago, the root problems of Roman urbanity are not so different today: the accelerating phenomena of tourism and gentrification continue to dictate urban development and heritage policies, and if there is no more fights on the streets, one need not to search further than the systemic battles of the polarized society. Poverty and homelessness are widespread.

“The architecture of the city has not changed much”, Nicolini maintained, “on the contrary, the layers of experiences, the tender and the violent strains of emotion that accumulate in the city are superimposed on one another, together with the disordered processes of capitalist development (and the development of its negation)”.211 As the historical events of Estate Romana drift further – and closer again, in the cyclical fashion of (Roman) time, their analysis is the first step to their rediscovery in the context of today. The images, texts and impressions 208

Lynch 1991, p. 242.

Aureli & Tattara 2013, p. 46.

210 Renato Nicolini, Interview with Chronicalibri in Fava 2017, p. 51 211 Nicolini 1981, p. 67.

209

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now remain as a testimony and a source of inspiration for future generations, ”as it happens with all phenomena, from architecture to literature”.212 Today, many of the original themes of Estate Romana are more relevant than ever. The way in which the events radically confronted myths of antiquity and challenged the generic portrayal of history with their critical irony and spectacular visions; the inclusive outset that turned spectators into participants and critics, and inaugurated a temporary place of collaboration between the local authorities and the cultural pioneers, might seem unthinkable in the contemporary city. On the other hand, the recent surfacing of this nearly-forgotten era of innovative urbanism seems to give hope of a change – as in all things: what has happened before can happen again. Thus, the catalytic power of such interventions may reach further than imagined.

Bearing a substantial load of embedded meanings and traditions, historical environments can in fact be changed and presented in a new light by relatively minimal interventions: drawing lines between the imagined and the existing by occupying the perceived space – the space of memory – the exhibited work extends itself beyond its physical limitations. Among the very rare contemporary references is the Linz Super Branch project carried out by the Japanese Atelier Bow-Wow in 2009. The inventive architects, known for their behaviorological and phenomenological studies, temporarily modified the skyline of the historical city of Linz with an adventurous pathway built onto the rooftops of the buildings. The venture was enabled by a modest wooden structure, focusing on the sensual journey – the amazement and surprise of an unexpected spatial experience. The bridge-like structure circled above the city centre like a walkable rollercoaster, even diving through an old church tower, thus giving the iconic visual elements of the city a tangible spatial dimension. Restructuring the fragments of past and present, the temporary scaffolding resulted in an experience larger than its parts, an inclusive gesture of hospitality within the urban sphere.

In Rome, the minor revitalisations of the city’s central monuments have been accompanied by an ambitious cultural programme at Diocletian’s Baths during the autumn 2018. The colossal concourse of the ancient bath complex, along with another vaulted hall later transformed into a planetarium, have been re-employed through a weekly programme of exhibitions, talks, concerts and performances. Although the architectural reconfigurations produced by the festival Ō have been minimal – the building’s long employment as a museum is likely to put restrictions to their spatial design – the events’ multidisciplinary curation has succeeded in invigorating the ancient monument through the ephemeral instruments of light, sound and movement. Here, the premises of the project were purely artistic: lighting up the monument in the dark of the night, the imposing building becomes one with the event, with the vibrations of sound and the architecture of bodies.

Studying these various temporal experiences, the ephemeral presents three main qualities explored by Federica Fava. The first is their ability to install oneself on the existing, to consume and disappear without leaving a trace. The second is their simultaneous, inclusive outset: creating a hybrid cultural project in the form of direct and immediate experience. Finally, they employ various techniques of fiction, masking or storytelling, building an emotional memory by evoking a sense of wonder and thus altering the ordinary context. Such narratives may provide us with fascinating alternatives for the orthodoxy of the official, ’tourist’ narrative.

212

Interview with Giuseppe De Boni in Fava 2017, p. 140.

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(above) The Linz Super Branch by Atelier Bow-Wow takes over the skyline of the historical city. 2011. Photo by Osthangproject.org. (left) A concert at the Baths of Diocletian, Festival Ō, 2018.

From probable to preferable futures Due to their experimental, reversible nature, the temporary interventions and reappropriations enable a speculative design beyond the usual problem-solving of architecture, initiating conversations around possible futures, and whether or not they’re desirable, thus reaching from the probable scope of outcomes towards the preferable ones.213 What if design, instead of solving problems, posed them? This framework forces the designer to turn their attention away from a strictly defined problem and reflect upon the systems that may have created it.214 To untangle the problemacies of the modern era, Nicolas Bourriaud calls for “experimentation, because being modern means daring to seize the occasion, kairos. It means venturing, not resting contentedly with tradition, with existing formulas and categories; but seeking to clear new paths, to become a test pilot. To be equal to this risk, it is also necessary to call into question the solidity of things, to practice a generalized relativism, a critical comparatism unsparing of the most tenacious certainties, to perceive the institutional and ideological structures that surround us as circumstantial, historical, and changeable at will.”215 The temporary project is an instrument of trial and error, by nature tending towards uncertain, irregular situations.

213

“How designs are evaluated is also closely linked to a thorough understanding of probable futures, although it’s rarely expressed in those terms.” Stuart Candy in AIGA Eye on Design, 19.1.2017.

214 “Problems by their nature are born out of existing systems, so by layering a bespoke solution onto problems we may inadvertently reinforce those systems, whether we believe in their effectiveness or not.” AIGA Eye on Design, 19.1.2017.

215 Against all the jaded and outdated attitudes that once were, and still carry the title “modern”, Bourriaud rises the historical definition of the term: “what belongs to its time.” Bourriaud 2009, p. 16

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Following these trajectories, the architect Constantino Dardi proposes to overcome the traditional concept of the event, interpreting the exhibition itself as a laboratory where architectural objects become instruments to investigate spatial potentialities.216 Temporary experiences are inserted in the urban fabric to create places “of mediation between theoretical aspiration and propensity to concreteness.”217 The temporary can be an arena for constructing and testing out the hypothesis of a different reality, which, precisely because it is different, cannot be exactly prefigured.218 As architecture becomes a moment of transition, one must first frame the project’s duration and location, and only secondly the created space. The experience becomes the object of design – thus, freedom of use and experimentation by the participants should be considered as elements capable of supporting the creative process.

Especially when the spatial configurations, the social outset or the duration of the event distinguishes the given situation from the routine, as in the case of a festival219, the outcome cannot be exactly foreseen or determined by the designer. The design should thus be adaptable: it should realize elastic processes ready to accept different outcomes, variable circumstances or subsequent interventions. Instead of a fixed plan, a better approach may be a consideration of the possible scenarios: how the piece, its functions, aesthetics and connotations might change according to the way it is deployed. The architect must pass on their creation, as it is carried on by the participants, spectators and the cumulative, at times unpredictable trajectories of urban life.

Gentle interventions – responsible reversibility Although distant in time and space, the explored initiatives in the historical centres of Rome and Linz illustrate how the ‘ephemeral’ instruments may be able to overcome the division between the modern city and the historical city, allowing the flow of daily life, of fast-paced urbanity and of cultural and seasonal cycles to enter the ancient monuments. Critical of the current ‘musealisation’ of our built heritage, they represent the desire to preserve the transient, moving towards the delicate linkage of the eternal and the ephemeral city. In the words of Kevin Lynch: “Longevity and evanescence gain savor in each other’s presence: ‘In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in the morning’. The old environment is seen as an opportunity for dramatic enhancement and becomes richer than it was. This is not preservation, or even a simple addition, but a particular use of old and new.”220 Not taking the possible future trajectory of a building into account – or failing to reappropriate the old structures to the contemporary urban currents – has left much of Rome’s built environment in a state of decay. Unable to adapt to new circumstances and developments, many of the historical buildings have become obsolete with the passing of time. In addition to the often negative socio-economical impact that the unsustained buildings may have on their immediate surroundings, in recent years the issues of ecological performance have become increasingly important, calling into question the need to load the existing patrimony with further volumes. The increasing awareness of finite environmental resources has engendered a more clear-sighted consideration of the temporal nature of things – and therefore of the project.221 With the accelerating speed of systemic and societal changes, we simply cannot

216 217 218 219 220 221

Fava 2017, p. 80.

De Boni & Colombari 1993, p. 23.

See Santieri Selvaggi 2013, p. 26.

Here I refer to my own empirical studies as a designer for various festivals.

Lynch 1972.

Fava 2017, p. 29-30.

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continue to put up and tear down buildings at this rate – radical spatial conversions and temporary programmes can thus show the way to a more sustainable built environment. 222 One should be careful, however, of the generalisation that all ephemeral projects contribute to an ecologically, or socially, sustainable environment. While the ephemeral method has gained more popularity as an instrument of spatial production during the last decade in the form of various pop-up events, fairs, festivals and installations, it has revealed the downside of its regenerative power. Opening up to the world of hyper-consumption and programmed obsolescence, the attempt to synchronize architecture to the fast rhythms of the era is increasingly reduced to purely consumerist aspects linked to the destructive needs of production, the perpetual motion towards the multiplication of profits.223 Furthermore, while pop-up projects, from that summertime restaurant pavilion to temporary refugee housing, often do take into account the entire lifespan of a construction, they rarely provide any perspective on the long-term urban development of the area beyond that brief, single intervention.224 Most often conquering the outskirts of the city, many such happenings have rapidly interwoven their remote locations into the urban fabric, triggering a process of gentrification that eventually pushes the local communities – and the creatives themselves – even further into the periphery. Thus the sphere of the ephemeral is increasingly employed by the forces of capitalism, becoming a mere excuse for the legitimised sellout of the common environments.

Zygmunt Bauman suggests that as we live in an era leaning towards the manipulation of transience rather than durability, the old aspiration of eternity is, in fact, now exchanged for a desire “to dispose of things lightly in order to clear the site for other things similarly transient and similarly meant to be instantly used up”.225 Whereas in the natural order, the succession of various ephemeral phenomena, that is, having a certain beginning and end, guarantees a continuous development, in the technological world the duration of what is produced is no longer motivated by the aim of progress, but is linked to the economical-utilitarian calculus. While the natural elements depend on transformation, industrial ones are subject to obsolescence.226 On the other hand, many civil initiatives in Rome and beyond testify of the transformative power of spatial occupation. They demonstrate how, at best, a temporary project can grow into a legitimised, democratic institution for counter-culture, still maintaining its societal agenda.

Thus, the site and the subject of the intervention are the determining factors. The central, monumental sites of the city have rarely welcomed the creative, noncommercial initiatives.

However, the rediscovery and capture of these environments, as proven by Estate Romana, is not only a grand symbolic gesture, but could potentially help to accelerate an anti-gentrifying development: the community reclaiming the public space that has seized from being public.

In the book Good City Form, still studying time in relation to the city, Kevin Lynch juxtaposes the nature of human settlements with that of an ecosystem capable of reflecting on itself, thinking and therefore modifying itself accordingly.227 Returning to the original definition of ‘ephemeral’, we must underline the positive conception that it assumes when it is understood as

222 223 224 225

226 227

Failed Architecture 3.4.2018 Fava 2017, p. 26.

Failed Architecture 3.4.2018 Hence, “Being stuck with things for a long time, beyond their ‘use up and abandon’ date and beyond the moment when their ‘new and improved’ upgrades are on offer, is, on the contrary, the symptom of deprivation.” Bauman 1993, 126.

Leggieri 1997, p. 18.

Lynch 1981, p. 88-91.

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the essential component in the cycle of nature: in the alternation of individuals and epochs, and therefore in the regeneration of resources. From this point of view, it also evokes the concept of death, but understood almost as a necessary phase for the evolution of the universe: the word ‘passenger’ assumes such connotations in philosophy, science and religion. 228 Upon determining the methods and premises of the specific project, one might also consider the intervention as an absence - to act upon the urban space with a limited repertoire, perhaps in part to un-design, and consider what developments are unwanted.229 In this way, such initiatives can recognise local values, the important sites for micro-preservation, and perhaps protect the unfinishedness of certain spaces, cherishing the much-needed pause within the highly optimised urban grid. The possibility of a tender, responsible temporarity resides in the optimised use of the existing environment.

Momentary architectures The architect Jeremy Till calls out an awareness of time in the process of design, arguing “that time, not space, should be seen as the primary context in which architecture is conceived”. He refers not only to the lifeline of the designed objects, but also to the proceedings of their design, and the preceding layers of history that the project must accommodate and adjust to – or rebel against.230 Manfredo Tafuri underlines how “the moment” is also the founding element of the city.231 As the urban is essentially defined by the movement within, and the interrelations of its objects rather than their static form, there is no such thing as preservation, and each attempt results in a momentum that cannot be canceled. From an urban point of view, each project of conservation is a radical transformation in disguise. Awareness of these hidden dimensions is the key: a monument that has been reused – no matter how humbly – or that has been taken over by the deteriorating forces of nature, cannot be fixed or even protected, let alone framed as a site of enhanced historical value, without accelerating various fluxes of urban development that alter the surrounding urbanity.

A similarly careful consideration should perhaps be established of the surroundings of the historical artifact and the meanings and functions embedded within it, as is required in the guidelines concerning the preservation and repair of the built material itself. ”Reversibility”, in fact, is among the key principles recognised today in the methods of archaeogical preservation.

It means, that the conservator should avoid alterations and additions that cannot be undone or removed in further developments. 232 Furthermore, according to contemporary restoration policies, historical structures should never be repaired with a substance stronger than the original: destroying the inner balance of the object’s materials, this would only accelerate the decay of the conserved artifact. Preservation, thus, should not be understood as a single act of

228

Leggieri 1997, p. 18.

Fava 2017, p. 33-34.

230 Following the theory of Zygmunt Bauman, the favouring of mere physical – metric, and hence supposedly neutral – space leads to ”phenomenological reduction of daily experience to pure quantity, during which distance is ’depopulated’ and ’extemporalized’ – that it is systematically cleansed of all contingent and transitory traits.” Beyond its logistics and measurements, social space should be understood as a ”complex interaction of three interwoven, yet distinct processes – those of cognitive, aesthetic and moral spacings – and their respective products.” Till 2009.

231 Tafuri 1994, p. 19.

232 “The conservator is guided by and endeavors to apply the ‘principle of reversibility’ in his treatments. He should avoid the use of materials which may become so intractable that their future removal could endanger the physical safety of the objects. He also should avoid the use of techniques, the results of which cannot be undone if that should become desirable.” Texas A&M University, Department of Anthropology.

229

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recovery, but as a continuous process that little by little, perpetually, repairs the environment, while simultaneously continues to re-evaluate its own methods and premises in relation to the emerging conditions.

In the same way, especially when dealing with cultural landscapes of exceptional value, the most responsible actions may be the temporary, reversible ones – that consider the divergent life cycles of the historical context and their contemporary adjustments, tuning with the fast metabolisms that cross the city. As Hans Jonas writes: ”The platonic eros, directed at eternity, at the non-temporal, is not responsible for its object -- only for the changeable and the perishable can one be responsible.”233 Jonas argues that an understanding of an object’s temporarity brings with it a moral responsibility: ”What time cannot effect and to which nothing can happen is an object not of responsibility but of emulation.” Once the future of our creations is acknowledged, the ethical consequences of one’s actions towards that object and its environment have to be accounted for. The built environment is then a framework that can accommodate the multiplicity of time, rather than a barrier erected against it.

Thus, returning to the topic of the Aurelian Wall, celebrating urban continuity and the multiple roles that the Aurelian Wall has acted in the Roman cityscape could be more inviting and informative than stressing only the original, militant history of the monument. As a central urban feature it has recorded countless histories beyond its original purpose. A romantic ruin in a natural landscape can be an eerie sight – as defined by Lind, ruins are meant to be looked at, not entered – but in a living, striving city it is hard to legitimise keeping large buildings in the centre closed and unused, left for passive deterioration. Embracing and nourishing the parasitic life forms attached to the wall or infiltrated inside it may be a better strategy for preservation.

To develop an authentic ‘sense of place’– that tourism as a model of business tends to simplify – the inevitable image-creation of the city should emphasize attachment to the place among residents and visitors alike, providing them with accessible layers of local identity. The image of Rome should not only be curated to entice the tourists, but it should also work to strengthen ties between the city and its residents, giving them a sense of pride, agency, and the motivation to stay. At the same time, such an environment must enable gradual evolution. In the words of Kevin Lynch, ”we prefer a world that can be modified progressively, against a background of valued remains, a world in which one can leave a personal mark alongside the marks of history.”234 “We must acknowledge”, writes Steven Groák, “that in reality buildings have to be understood in terms of several different timescales over which they change, in terms of moving images and ideas in flux.”235 The context of time is one of contingency and uncertainty. Rome, as a historical metropolis above all others, must continue to search for new means of recognising, redeeming, reconsiliating and reappropriating its historical layers, from the fragile relics of antiquity to the urban craters produced by its violent histories, and again to the tenacious local ways of life. ”The constraining force of the crisis does not mark the fulfillment of an ineluctable process, it does not close us in any fatality. It calls for an overturn and a change of perspective: the endless crisis is an infinite task and not the end.”236

233

Jonas 1984, p. 125.

Lynch 1972, p. 39.

235 Groák 1992, p. 11.

236 Revault d’Allonnes 2012.

234

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