Qual è il senso oggi di un interrogarsi sull’origine della città, intesa quale luogo comunitario in cui si vive e a cui si appartiene, soprattutto al cui futuro ciascuno presta un personale contributo? La fondazione di una città, non importa se attraverso un unico atto o una combinazione di fattori tra loro più o meno contemporanei, sicuramente ci parla dei termini di necessità dell’epifania urbana, stabilendo così le forme prime dell’essere di una città. Allo stesso tempo però l’atto fondativo non può dirsi concluso e anzi continuamente rivive rigenerandosi in quel processo di trasformazione che interpreta i successivi stati di necessità della città attraverso i secoli. Da qui il tema di un’origine che si fa strumento di caratterizzazione del divenire della città, dove al dato fondativo segue la (dis)continuità storica di quello ri-fondativo. La risposta non può quindi essere risolta solo sul piano conoscitivo dell’archeologia, cioè della scoperta dell’origine nella profondità di un evo antico a cui appartiene gran parte della città italiana per non dire europea. Per cogliere ma soprattutto misurare il senso perdurante dell’origine bisognerà allora avvalersi di una fenomenologia storica di ri-fondazione della città, anche attraverso saperi eterogenei ma accomunati dal proprio interesse nella costruzione dell’identità urbana. A 2200 anni dalla fondazione, Parma nonché Reggio Emilia e Modena, ma in generale tutto il sistema delle città romane lungo l’asse poleogenetico della via Emilia, offrono un campo limitato ma molto significativo per l’applicazione di questa eterodossa lettura sul significato e l’uso, tra conoscenza e progetto, dell’origine urbana.
What is the meaning today of wondering about the origins of the city, in the sense of a community place which we inhabit and belong to, and especially its future, which each of us personally contributes to? The foundation of a city, whether through a single act or a combination of more or less contemporary factors, surely speaks to us of the necessary terms of the urban realization, thereby establishing the city’s forms before its being. At the same time, however, the founding act can never be considered complete and is indeed continuously relived, regenerating itself in that process of transformation which interprets the city’s subsequent demands down the centuries. Hence the notion of an origin which becomes an instrument to characterize the becoming of the city,
where the founding fact is followed by the historical (dis)continuity of the re-founding one. The answer cannot therefore be resolved merely at the fact-finding level of archaeology, i.e. the discovery of the origin in the depths of an ancient era to which a large part of Italian and European cities belong. To grasp, but especially to measure, the lasting sense of the origin it will therefore be necessary to turn to a historical phenomenology of the re-foundation of the city, also through disparate kinds of knowledge united by their curiosity in constructing urban identity. At 2,200 years from their foundation, Parma, Reggio Emilia, and Modena, but indeed the entire system of Roman cities along the poleogenetic axis of the Via Aemilia, offer a limited but very significant terrain for the application of this heterodox reading of the meaning and use of the urban origin, between knowledge and design.
Alessia Morigi (1969), after taking her Degree in Classics specializing in Archaeology, a specialisation and PhD in Archaeology at the University of Bologna, researching and teaching at the Second University of Naples and the University of Parma, since 2014 she has been Associate professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Parma. She coordinates the “S.F.E.R.A. Programme: Spaces and Forms of Ancient Emilia Romagna”, within which she directs the archaeological mission of the University of Parma at the Villa of Theoderic. She has been delegated by the Rector and has coordinated for the University of Parma the archaeological component of the celebrations for Parma 2200 and the archaeological exhibition in the area of the Roman bridge of Parma. She won the Antonio Veggiani Prize, she is Chair of the Studi Romagnoli society and she is a member of the scientific cometee of the Alcide Cervi Institute - Emilio Sereni Library Archive. She is the author of monographs and essays that have been published nationally and internationally for the most part dealing with the settlement dynamics of the city and territory in the Roman world.
Carlo Quintelli (1958), after a degree from the Polytechnic University of Turin, a PhD taken at the IUAV in Venice, research and teaching at the Polytechnic University of Turin, since 2001 he has been a full professor of Architectural and Urban Composition at the University of Parma, whose Faculty of Architecture he helped found along with Guido Canella in 1998. Director of the Festival of Architecture from 2003 to 2011, he has applied himself to architectural research on the themes of urban regeneration, the polycentric system of the Via Emilia (“Cittaemilia”), and the settlement and architecture of the university. Chief Science Officer for Erasmus IP, the author of numerous essays and a designer of various works of architecture realized, between 2013 and 2017, in his role as Pro-rector in Building and Urban Settlements of the University of Parma, he has supervised the revitalisation of the Abbey of Valserena, seat of the CSAC, and developed the university settlement system known as “Mastercampus”.
