A walking Piazza Duomo

According to Michael de Certeau, the anthropologist, “the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a
viewpoint and nothing more”1. This quote, despite its lyrical character, can provide us a meaningful
explanation of the set of knowledges gained through the act of walking. Indeed, walking is an elementary
form whereby we can acquire pieces of information about the space we are soaked in. By walking we get to
know a certain space, we familiarize with it, and we can enhance our space’s representation with
imagination and other abstract cognitions. Michael de Certeau focused on the act of walking as an
enunciative act, as well the speech act is 2; the parallelism between speech act and walking act leads us to
understand how, just by the act of walking, we can be involved in a recursive and roughly endless process
of appropriation of sense. When we walk around, we need to be aware that the space itself, as we
perceived it, it’s composed of an infinite stratification of meaning, possibilities and history. “The walker
transforms each spatial signifier into something else” 3, so he/she can recollect the heterogeneity of the
data grasped into an organic schema of the space. This so-called schema or mind map will be never able to
develop all the meaning involved in the multi-stratification of the space. This “fallacy”, far from bother us,
can be considered as a constant incentive to walk again through the same place, in order to discover new
meanings of it. By having this thought on mind while we go around the city, it can help us to look familiar
space with a new eye. We suddenly realize that the square we go through every day is not what we think,
or better, it is not just what we think it is. it will exhibit to our gaze sight new details. Every detail has its set
of meaning and part of the understanding of a certain space consists in the harmonization of all the
meaning and the knowledges we have in regard of it.

Walking around Piazza Duomo of Trento with this attitude can provide us a deeper understanding of at
least two crucial aspects:

1)HISTORICAL STRATIFICATION:

One of the main things you can notice in Piazza Duomo is the blending of buildings from different ages,
which is pretty common in Italy and Europe, nevertheless it can provide us an idea of the specific history of
Trento. The quadrangular square contains two fountains: the first one is called “Fontana dell’Aquila” (XIX
century), the second is “Fontana del Nettuno” (XVIII century), then we have a porch and plenty of historical
houses of power families (like “Casa Balduini” XV century, “Casa Cazzuffi” XVI century, “Casa Rella” XVI
century), lastly we have “Palazzo Pretorio” (built in between IX and XIII century) with its Tower, originally a
prison, and the church, “Cattedrale di San Virgilio” (built between XIII and XIV century). All these buildings
are mixed up with other contemporary structures as bar, restaurant, shops.

An historian would look at all these different elements and he would be able, just by observing them, to
retrace the historical facts occurring in Trento. He/she could also speculate about the changes happened in
the square through the passage of time: for example, he would be able to imagine people washing their
laundries in the square because the piazza’s floor keeps a track of the old sink used to be placed here, also
an historian would be able to look at the arms on the Palazzo Pretorio’s wall and supply an useful excursus

1
De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall. University of California Press, 1984, esp. chap.
VII 'Walking in the City', pp 92.
2
“At the most elementary level, it has a triple “enunciative” function: it is a process of appropriation of the
topographically system on the part of the pedestrian […]; it is a spatial acting-out of the place […]; and it implies
relations among different positions […]” De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall.
University of California Press, 1984, esp. chap. VII 'Walking in the City', pp. 97-98.
3
De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall. University of California Press, 1984, esp. chap.
VII 'Walking in the City', pp
about the overlapping of political and religious power in Trento’s history and so on. What must we ask
ourselves is what kind of value can these descriptions have for a social science? Are the historical reports of
a square useful for a sociological explanation of Piazza Duomo’s enviroment? The answer is yes. In the
regard of spatial turn in historical field of research, Ralph Kingston states that

“For the historian, this new Spatial Turn gives us the opportunity to investigate the
importance of spatial actions (or s pace in action) as well as utterances” 4 .

The contribution of sociology to history is, as we can see, well known, but we have to admit that the
contrary is also true. Without any kind of knowledge about history of Trento, without historical capabilities
and sensibility to read the elements composing the square, how can we explain the kind of interaction we
see in the piazza? How can we be able to interpretate the overwhelming occurrence of the building church
regarding the other buildings? As social scientist we don’t have to take in account all the facts of the history
of Trento but mixing a sociology awareness with an historical one can help us to dig deeper in the
observation of the Piazza with all its occurrences.

2) MULTI-PURPOSE SPACE

After reflecting about the historical clues thank with we can have an access to the historical stratification of
the Piazza, we can observe how nowadays people use the piazza. Obviously, the set of using has changed
over the time: in the past, when globalization did not exist at all and mobility worked in such a limited way,
the main square of a town used to be a place of aggregation, the public opinion was established here,
through the connection and the relationship between pleasant and wealthy people. The square was an
important commercial centre, because the market was located here, and the mix of people coming from
different areas (urban district, as well rural ones) contributed to create a public opinion, a “voice of the
piazza”; also we can imagine a place full of horses, donkeys, and other animals, people screaming, a low
level of hygiene, more chaos and less decency. By walking around the square, we can infer that things now
are different: Piazza Duomo is mainly a touristic spot, for this reason the environment is clean and tidy, full
of tourist drinking their expensive coffee, eating their GROM ice cream. This square does not seem to
belong to citizen anymore because of its touristic relevance and it is very difficult to spot people spending
their time here, unless they are passing visitors. Also, the square’s organization suggest it: there is no free
place to sit and talk. Naturally you can observe people at the bottom of the Fontana di Nettuno sitting, but
after a while they go away. We understand that Piazza Duomo is no long a place to stay, but, maybe, a
place to meet, a place to observe the great view of the church and then go away, maybe to somewhere
more comfortable and cheaper. I admit that what I’m presenting is a vicious reconstruction, maybe
someone who has more free time would see in Piazza Duomo the fulfilment of other needs, but the
partiality of my observations is another proof of the multi-purpose nature of the square as social space,
historically shaped.

4
Kingston, R. (2010) 'Mind Over Matter? History and the Spatial Turn', Cultural and Social History, 7:1, 111-121.