Stefania Bonfiglioli is a cultural geographer and professor at the Department of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna. Her interests centre on geographical theories and epistemologies, cultural geographies, feminist and gender studies, and the relationship between geography and ethics. In the past, her attention focused, among other things, on Egnazio Danti, a unique geographer and intellectual active in Bologna in the last quarter of the 16th century. Now, however, she has written a brilliant study on the Bologna Porticoes, Heritage as threshold: an autoethnographic exploration of the porticoes of Bologna (Italy) published by a prestigious international scientific journal, "Cultural Geographies". We interviewed her to find out more.
Professor, what is the reason for your interest in the Porticoes of Bologna?
SB. My interest in the porticoes began in 2019, when the nomination dossier for UNESCO World Heritage List was taking shape. I had a clear hypothesis, based on my spatial idea of the porticoes: that the nomination would not be a straightforward affair. In 2019, for a speech at an academic event on Bologna open to citizens, I chose the porticoes as a way to tell the story of the city and, studying the literature on the subject, I was won over by the vibrancy of the history and the stories it contained. Then, at the end of 2020 and especially in 2021, I decided to test and further explore my hypotheses on the complexity of the porticoes’ space in relation to their nomination, also doing research in the field. I am a woman from Bologna who, before this research, had not inhabited the porticoes; I had walked them many times without really noticing them. As a Bolognese, however, I knew that the complexity and richness of the porticoes could only be sought in the vitality of daily experience, or rather in the intertwining of their history and the flow of life beneath them. Hence the article I wrote, preceded, in 2022, by a paper for an international conference.
From what point of view did you study them? And with what methodology?
SB. You choose points of view and methodology based on the objectives and questions you ask yourself. Understanding the spatial nature of the porticoes was my first goal. As I said, I already had a hypothesis about it: that the porticoes were thresholds and that this made their nomination for UNESCO Heritage quite difficult. However, I had to test this hypothesis, so I chose the research methodology and points of view.
The starting point for my research was that of experience, based on the idea that the meanings of each space are built and reconstructed by the experiences of those who experience, live and travel through them. Hence my decision to test my hypotheses in the field, that is, walking for many hours under the porticoes, participating in life under them, taking notes and photos. Another fundamental point of view concerns the idea of heritage – or rather the idea of its construction – as a narrative, the progressive production of meanings in relation to certain spaces.
As for the methods, the main approach was autoethnographical. It is an innovative method, one of the most recent in international research in humanities and social sciences. Simply put, autoethnography is a method that does not reject autobiography in conjunction with the concrete exploration of a context. In my study, I developed a first-person narrative of my experience of the porticoes. From a theoretical point of view, I strengthened this narrative through engagement with the international debates on heritage – as well as on thresholds and threshold experiences – and I also compared it with other narratives of the porticoes, from the official ones on the UNESCO site to the literary and artistic ones of the present and of the past.
Your concept of the porticoes as thresholds seems insightful and full of implications. Can you tell us about it?
SB. As a geographer, I thought I had to first find the most appropriate spatial concept to explain what porticoes are, and I found it in the threshold idea. I will tell you about it based on very concrete observations. What we most frequently encounter under the porticoes, also by virtue of their historical genesis, are doors – entrances to houses. And in fact the term portico (porticus) derives from the Latin porta, which precisely means door, entrance. From those doors you have direct access to private homes or walkways or the stairwells of these homes. The most extraordinary aspect of the porticoes is that their flooring is exactly the same as that of the houses beyond the doors. This means that the people who walk under the porticoes share and set foot on the same floor as those who live on the other side of those doors. This continuity between inside and outside, between house and street, is due to the fact that the porticoes are a street extension of the entrances of the houses, of the floors of the entrance of the houses. And the floor of the front door, the bottom of a doorway, is exactly what we call a threshold. Therefore, in my interpretation, the entire space of Bologna’s porticoes, being an extension of the entrance of the houses and their floors, constitutes a threshold.
By virtue of the continuity between home and street, between inside and outside, between private space and public space, created by the porticoes, those who walk under them are neither entirely on the street nor entirely at home, since they are both outside and inside, in the street and at home. And a threshold is just that: an undefined zone between inside and outside, where opposites – such as public and private, street and house – come together. The threshold, in other words, is the concept that most effectively explains the complex geography of the porticoes, since it constitutes the spatial interpretation of their well-known function of connection and mediation between public and private.
At some point you write that the porticoes are heritage assets that are ‘different‘ from the usual UNESCO heritage sites. In what sense?
SB. I wrote that the otherness of the porticoes as UNESCO Heritage lies in their being "heritage as a threshold". This otherness explains the difficulties encountered in the nomination process but it also illustrates the original and innovative character of the porticoes as heritage. It is precisely by virtue of this otherness that I have considered the porticoes a case to be brought to the attention of international debates on heritage. But we must proceed in an orderly way and return to the spatiality of the thresholds. Thresholds are not limits or boundaries, as is generally believed; on the contrary, thresholds challenge the reasons for boundaries. Borders clearly distinguish and separate, like the lines drawn on maps, but thresholds are transition and interchange zones that also hold opposites together. But if the porticoes are thresholds and therefore undermine the reasons for boundaries, then the porticoes as heritage call into question that idea of heritage that most characterises official discourses on heritage. According to international heritage literature, official discourses such as that of UNESCO refer to heritage, in its material sense, as a site with identifiable and traceable boundaries on a map. But if porticoes are thresholds, they are made to disrupt borders, and not only between street and house, or between public and private. Just ask yourself where a portico begins and ends, as I myself wondered during my field research.
Professor, where does a portico begin and end?
SB. Where every pedestrian path starts and ends. Many journeys under the porticoes, including mine, do not follow linear trajectories, as people enter and exit the porticoes wherever they want, between the columns. This confirms the idea that porticoes do not have static boundaries; on the contrary, their boundaries, as well as their relationships with streets, houses, and the entire city, are continuously constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed by the daily practices of those who inhabit and walk under them. So under the porticoes, people not only walk, but also stop, converse, look at the shop windows, sit at the table of a bar or a restaurant, read, paint, sometimes dance, etc. It follows that even the meanings of the porticoes are incessantly constructed and reconstructed by the myriad daily practices of the people living their lives beneath them. This multiplicity of practices therefore takes us beyond the boundaries of any unambiguous and exhaustive definition of porticoes.
It is clear that there is no single conception of heritage, but, depending on the cultural position from which it is observed, the scientific literature distinguishes between a heritage from below, which expresses “counter-hegemonic” practices, and one from above, which privileges imposed meanings. How do these contrasting visions apply to our porticoes?
SB. Contemporary scientific literature distinguishes between an "authoritative discourse on heritage", which also includes that of UNESCO, and an idea of heritage "from below" whose values and meanings, often alternative to official ones, are built on daily practices and experiences. In the case of Bologna’s porticoes, between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, ICOMOS, an advisory body to UNESCO, postponed their nomination, raising doubts about the nature of what was being proposed. My starting geographical hypotheses had been confirmed: the candidacy of the porticoes could not be simple if, in the official discourse on heritage, the idea of heritage (in its material component) remained based on that of a site with clear boundaries. The point of view of the official discourse is geographically from top to bottom, because it is the point of view of the maps, on which it is possible to identify homogeneous areas by drawing clear border lines. But as regards the porticoes, twelve sections had been nominated, as they were representative of the entire system. They are located in different parts of the city, with some even in the suburbs, and therefore do not constitute an easily definable homogeneous area. And in fact, even after the inclusion of the porticoes on the World Heritage List, UNESCO continues to recommend that the boundaries of the heritage entity be revised. This is a really problematic question if porticoes, as I interpret them, are "heritage as threshold", that is, heritage to be conceived spatially as a threshold. The issue is problematic insofar as, once again, porticoes, as thresholds, call into question any heritage narrative that is founded on the certainties of borders.
What implications does the concept of threshold have on the definition of “heritage”?
SB. In my article I propose the idea of "heritage as a threshold", which I mean and explain in different ways. The first way has already emerged from the previous answer: the idea of "heritage as a threshold" is a spatial sense of heritage that challenges borders and calls into question the most widespread conception of heritage in the official discourse on the subject. Yet, the porticoes were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Which means that the discourse on heritage, also through the example of porticoes, can and is evolving beyond a rigid opposition between authorised discourse, on the one hand, and alternative interpretations"from below", on the other.
I thus arrive at another way of understanding "heritage as a threshold", which is linked to the fact that thresholds, unlike borders, hold together and make different perspectives interact with each other. I have extended the spatial idea of "heritage as threshold" also to the cultural process of constructing heritage itself, when this process is based on the interweaving of official discourses and daily experiences "from below” and on their mutual influence and transformation. In the text for the nomination of the porticoes, the story of the function of connection between public and private spaces was an essential aspect. And this function also concerns the daily experience of the porticoes, as well as their history. Which means that, through the nomination text, an important component of the daily experience of the porticoes has actually become part of the official discourse on them. But this is even more evident in today's narration of the porticoes as UNESCO heritage: even on the "official" websites dedicated to them, the speech of the porticoes is constantly enriched, modified, influenced by aesthetic views, autobiographical experiences "from below" and so on. The construction of the narrative on the porticoes as heritage therefore represents a perfect example of a process of transition and interchange between different perspectives, between official discourses and daily experiences – a process that I associate strictly with the spatiality of the thresholds.
In your opinion, what study perspectives can germinate from this vision of the portico as a threshold?
SB. I can say what contribution I intended to give to the study of the porticoes by interpreting them as thresholds. First of all, I wanted to offer a spatial interpretation of the porticoes that held together their history with the vitality of the flow of life beneath them. I have restored the daily experience of the porticoes as a threshold experience through field exploration, and therefore from below, and I have recovered their history by developing a theory on the thresholds starting from the very etymology of the term portico, i.e. door (see above).
Several key studies have explained, in a historical-architectural perspective, the genesis of the Bologna portico starting from the expansion of the upper floors of the houses. I did not look upwards, since it had already been done and documented abundantly; instead, I stayed under the porticoes and looked down, especially at their floors. My vision of the porticoes as thresholds can therefore absorb – from another point of view that is both geographical and etymological – the already well-studied history and function of Bologna’s porticoes.
So, everything I have already said about the idea of "heritage as a threshold" applies. In proposing this idea, I have tried to highlight and interpret, among other things, the "otherness" of the porticoes as UNESCO heritage and, at the same time, their "value" in relation to the current challenges that concern both the ideas of heritage and the cultural construction of heritage. Precisely for this reason I wanted to bring the case of the porticoes and their nomination to international attention, at least in the academic field.
Another suggestion in your article is the idea of the play of portico architecture with light and consequently with shadow...
SB. The combination of light and shadow could not, of course, be ignored in a work on the porticoes. This is the most fascinating, artistic and beloved combination in the Bolognese porticoes. I have included a discussion of this combination in my idea of the porticoes as thresholds. In those areas that constitute the thresholds, where experiences are poised between opposites, opposites can be held together by simultaneity (such as street and home, or public and private) but also by fluctuation, as in light and shadow. Walking under the porticoes of Bologna means standing continuously on the threshold between light and shadow, playing with the shadow of one's own body as it appears, disappears and reappears in the alternation of light and darkness created by the columns, always drawing new shadow embroidery on the floors and the interior walls of the porticoes. This play of light and shadow, where architecture interacts in an ever-changing way with the passing bodies, and with all the objects that are under the porticoes, is always dynamic and always heralding new meanings for the porticoes themselves.
Several narratives of Bologna deal with the fascination of the fluctuation between light and shadow; they range through the literary, visual, syncretic, present and past and I compare them in my article: from the chiaroscuro of Guercino to Dickens' Pictures from Italy, from Grisham's The Broker to the short films by Renzi and Bertolucci, up to the video by Bonifacci and Accorsi that celebrates the inscription of the porticoes on the UNESCO World Heritage List. This comparison between narratives is really the construction of a discourse on heritage, spanning the centuries and constantly enriched by new gazes and perspectives, on the threshold between light and shadow.
Your article concludes opening up many considerations, in fact you close by saying: "My autoethnographic exploration of the porticoes led me to realise that Bologna is an ideal place for liminal experiences".
SB. My article ends with an expression, "liminal experiences", which is really crucial to my work. Liminal means "threshold, relating to the threshold", since it derives from limen, the Latin term for threshold. As already mentioned, before starting my exploration in the field, I already thought of the porticoes as thresholds, as complex spaces of co-presence of opposites. Walking under the porticoes has not only confirmed my hypothesis, but has also strengthened and expanded it from at least two points of view: that of the gaze directed at the floor and the entrances of the houses and that of the experiences "between", experiences poised between intertwining opposites. The liminal, threshold experiences that the porticoes make possible are exactly experiences poised between opposites and, as such, they are always dynamic, they are never the same and they can be perceived in very different ways by those who live them. Take the liminal experience between light and shadow: over the centuries, it has given rise to very different impressions of the city's atmosphere, which can be seen in many narratives. There are those (the majority) who see protection and welcome in the shade of the porticoes, typical of the interior of a house, and those who see in those shadows a grave and austere aura. In my autoethnographic exploration, both impressions alternated, indicating that liminal experiences can be complex to the point of being even contradictory.
But complexity is richness and vitality, a narrative that continues. In making liminal experiences possible and available to everyone, the porticoes keep the city's discourse alive. Heritage, moreover, is never only the discourse and protection of the past, it is also a narrative of the present and the future.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14744740241269141
