How Bologna’s porticoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site, redefine the spatial concepts of heritage

The inclusion of Bologna’s porticoes in the UNESCO World Heritage List represents not only a recognition of the great artistic and socio-cultural value preserved in the city, but also a crucial turning point to redefine the spatial concepts of heritage.

This concept is brought forward by Stefania Bonfiglioli, geographer and professor at the Department of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna, in a study published in the international journal  Cultural Geographies.

The study originated from research conducted by walking under Bologna’s porticoes. This field exploration allowed to develop a narrative of the daily experience of this heritage. This narrative was then theoretically strengthened by dialogue through international debates on heritage, and later compared with other porticoes’ narratives, including the official ones linked to the UNESCO and past and present literary and artistic narratives.

‘According to my interpretation, the porticoes are thresholds, that is, heritage to be spatially conceptualised as a threshold’, explains Professor Bonfiglioli. ‘This concept of “heritage as threshold” allows to explain, first of all, the spatial nature of the porticoes, built by both their history and the flowing of everyday life under them’.

Those who happen to be or walk under the porticoes are always living a precarious experience among opposites – public and private, outside and inside, street and home, light and shadow: it’s a threshold experience. Because of this threshold nature of the porticoes, as a place where opposites intersect, the people that pass through them are neither completely in the street neither completely at home – they are simultaneously in and out, in the street and at home.

‘Thresholds challenge the reasons for boundaries. Indeed, while boundaries distinguish and divide, thresholds are areas of transition and interchange that keep opposites together’, goes on Bonfiglioli. ‘Therefore, the concept of threshold most effectively explains the geography of the porticoes, as it represents the spatial interpretation of their well-known function of connection and mediation between public and private’.

Consequently, the porticoes, as thresholds, challenge the most common spatial concept of heritage (a material one), which is that of site with definite boundaries, trackable on a map. It is, indeed, in this that lies the original and innovative nature of the porticoes as UNESCO heritage.

‘Where does a portico begin and end? Where a pedestrian path makes it begin and end. Many pathways under the porticoes don’t follow linear trajectories, as people enter and exit the porticoes wherever they like, through the pillars’, says Bonfiglioli. ‘Porticoes don’t have static boundaries. On the contrary, their boundaries, just like their relationships with streets, houses and the whole city, are continuously built, then dismantled and rebuilt by the daily practices of those who inhabit and cross them’.

Furthermore, people do not only walk under the porticoes, but they stop, talk, look at shop windows, sit in cafés or restaurants, read, paint, and sometimes even dance. Thus, the meanings of the porticoes, too, are continuously built and rebuilt by the myriad of activities carried out every day under they arcades.

‘The porticoes case allows to conceive a spatial concept of “heritage as threshold”, which challenges the static certainties of boundaries and definitions’, concludes Bonfiglioli. ‘From this perspective, the concept of “heritage as threshold” is also a spatial interpretation of the process of heritage construction, when based on the intertwine of official discourse and daily experiences, on their reciprocal influence and transformation’.

The study was published in the journal  Cultural Geographies under the title ‘Heritage as threshold: an autoethnographic exploration of the porticoes of Bologna (Italy)’. The author is Stefania Bonfiglioli, professor at the Department of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna.