Ancient Rome was born of myth (Aeneas in Latium, Evander and the Golden Age of Saturn, Romulus and Remus) and declined in myth. Even after its fall, it continued, like a black hole, to exercise a powerful force of attraction throughout the West, a force accumulated over the course of its history: the Medieval emperors were crowned among the ruins of the ancient city, dreaming of a renovatio imperii that would never come to pass, except perhaps in myth. It was a myth that found its image - imago urbis but also imago orbis et mundi - in the ideal city designed by Michelangelo on the Capitoline Hill. Whence did this force derive? Virgil would have replied The Fates; we moderns instead respond History. In either case, a city - and not only an exceptional city like Rome - is much more than an architectural-urban conglomeration. It is above all the sediment of an infinite interplay between humankind and the vague forces of the future. Kyoto, lying at the geographic antipodes from Rome, offers another eloquent model, though one equally opposite in type. It is the city of an invisible and symbolic emperor and lay closed for a millennium within the enchanted enclosure of a palace garden: unique in the world, it is the archetype of an ideal city, like a mandala, that has been immune from the chaos of history.
Roma oyobi Kyoto no shinwa to rekishi no aida (Rome and Kyoto between myth and history)
RICCA, LAURA;
2013
Abstract
Ancient Rome was born of myth (Aeneas in Latium, Evander and the Golden Age of Saturn, Romulus and Remus) and declined in myth. Even after its fall, it continued, like a black hole, to exercise a powerful force of attraction throughout the West, a force accumulated over the course of its history: the Medieval emperors were crowned among the ruins of the ancient city, dreaming of a renovatio imperii that would never come to pass, except perhaps in myth. It was a myth that found its image - imago urbis but also imago orbis et mundi - in the ideal city designed by Michelangelo on the Capitoline Hill. Whence did this force derive? Virgil would have replied The Fates; we moderns instead respond History. In either case, a city - and not only an exceptional city like Rome - is much more than an architectural-urban conglomeration. It is above all the sediment of an infinite interplay between humankind and the vague forces of the future. Kyoto, lying at the geographic antipodes from Rome, offers another eloquent model, though one equally opposite in type. It is the city of an invisible and symbolic emperor and lay closed for a millennium within the enchanted enclosure of a palace garden: unique in the world, it is the archetype of an ideal city, like a mandala, that has been immune from the chaos of history.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
