Mantua, City of Water between History and the Present

• Main Authors: Pierfranco Galliani, Cassandra Cozza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Palermo University Press 2017-12-01
• Series: Agathón
• Subjects: Mantua; city of water; critical continuity
• Online Access: https://www.agathon.it/agathon/article/view/54

Ever since the Middle Ages, the relation between nature and architecture has characterised Mantua’s environmental situation and urban form. The artificial formation of the lakes transformed the city into a peninsula and placed it in the state of a comprehensive artefact whose complexity had to be considered in the case of every new intervention. Water is the limen of the city’s essence: the boundary separating it from the countryside and a defensive barrier; a threshold between nature and artifice by means of embankment-bridges; and a medium of the fluvial interchange. Some design experimentations delineate the principles of a critical continuity in which renewal means belonging to the stratification of the history of the places.