Università Roma Tre

Could - and should - urban space be considered cultural heritage? If so, how can we reveal the hidden properties of the spatial system, so to turn it into a cultural landscape? And how could these properties be communicated in order to integrate space as cultural heritage into contemporary and social construction processes? How can cities integrate historic layers (palimpsests) into their urban development? The project aims at critically examining and synthesizing archaeological and urban artefacts, matching them with other memories of human experience in the urban landscape. Our intention is to analyze and interpret the city of Rome following roman aqueducts (from Porta Capena to Parco degli Acquedotti) with its surroundings, hypothetically made up of five distinguishable, interrelated layers: The original landscape: the topography of the ancient city; Classical Rome (a period of ca. twelve centuries); Medieval Rome (ca. ten centuries); the Rome of the Renaissance and Baroque (ca. four centuries); Modern and contemporary Rome (after 1871). These different layers have constantly interacted through the historical development of urbanism, and their existing elements in the urban landscape will be identified, studied and described by students in different ways such as mapping, storytelling collection, archival research.