A disappearing past, a forgetting present, a fading future...

ORIGINAL POST: UN PASSATO CHE SCOMPARE, UN PRESENTE CHE DIMENTICA E UN FUTURO CHE CANCELLA

 

Let’s try to picture a house, our house. Our shelter, the place where we rest, where every day we find ourselves in. We may travel all around the world, but home is always our fixed point, our main destination. Now let’s imagine losing it, having to abandon it forever…let’s picture a village, or a city, let’s picture every single place we hang around every single day. Let’s picture a memory of our childhoods. And now, let’s picture a cemetery of houses, of broken memories and ruins of interrupted lives…this was the sad destiny of many towns, and will be the inescapable destiny of many others. 

Large is the number of ghost towns in Italy and the world, larger than what one would imagine. Some to resist time and destruction for now, others are gone forever, erased from memory and maps alike. Many can be the causes for this most times traumatic and painful abandon. Earthquakes, floods, fires, landslides, natural phenomena in front of which we remain defenceless. Many towns were forgotten and left alone even before dying. Maybe after being exploited for as long as they could produce wealth. And then they empty slowly, and slowly they become skeletons of the past. Because man needs a home to feel safe, but the home too needs man to keep standing… The present of many houses, today, is this… 

 

Romagnano Al Monte, abandoned after the Irpinia Earthquake, Italy.

 

But the future could be even worse…

 

The future of Timbuktu

 

A city like Detroit has lost more than 700.000 residents in the last 30 years. Half a century ago it numbered almost 2 million inhabitants, today it’s down to 900.000 and the number keeps dropping. But Banjul, capital city of Gambia, faces the risk of complete sinking due to erosion and the rising of the sea level. Mexico City, too, is sinking, because of the aquifer that constitutes the city’s primary drinking water source. Each time one of its residents drinks a glass of water, the city subsides a little. In the last 100 years, it has sunk as much as 9 metres. Naples could potentially be destroyed by a Vesuvio eruption, as could San Francisco by the infamous “Big One”.

 

How Detroit looks like today

 

Past can’t be changed, but it’s in the present that we can do something to keep whole cities from disappearing or being forgotten. In Italy, a recent report by Legambiente and Serico-Gruppo Cresme has forseen that in 2016 4.395 will be the towns that, if no interventions are made, will suffer a progressive housing problems: 42,2% of Italian towns, 10,4% of the population. Among these, 1.650 are destined to become actual ghost towns, which means a fifth of all Italian municipalities, the 4,2% of the population. To the already numerous ghost towns will thus add more, in a spiralling motion of relentless abandon. 

For many, ghost towns are places with a mysterious charm, remote corners to experience the absence of man where there once was a heavy presence. Apocalyptic landscapes of a destroyed past, where a camera can capture a decaying but still attractive and seductive remain of someone else’s lives. But it’s not so for everyone…for those who lived there, it’s not a ghost town, it’s home disappearing into oblivion. In our journey through these villages, we met many people who sadly told us “We’ve been forgotten”. This is the truth. We have forgotten that in Italy there still are authentic and wonderful places, where old cultures and traditions still survive, where people live simply and with fond attachment to their roots. We’ve seen these villages emptied, now inhabited only by the elderly because the young have gone away. Those very elderly who already had to abandon their homes and now see their hometown disappear. Ghost towns can be enhanced by telling their story, as long as we don’t stay indifferent. They existed and still try to survive, but if nothing is done they will die with the last who lived there. We must help them be remembered, and most importantly avoid them falling apart forever. And if for many of them it’s already too late, for many others there’s still much that can be done to contrast their abandon and prevent a piece of Italy from being forgotten. For a place with no memory has no future, but future is what we create in the present…

(Translation by Marco Salvadori)

Link to ORIGINAL POST.

The ancient glory of Tenochtitlán

ORIGINAL POST: L'ANTICA GLORIA DI TENOCHTITLÁN 

"We were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments told in the book of Amadis, on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream?" (Bernal Diaz del Castillo)

The grand Tenochtitlán was founded in 1325 by the legendary king Tenoch on lake Texcoco, Mexico, and rapidly became the most important city of Central America. Built on a rocky island, Tenochtitlán spanned for some 10 square kilometres and was split in four districts, linked to dry land through bridges and embankments. The city provided both streets and canals, so that it could be reached both by feet and by canoe.  In the city centre stood a 30 metres tall pyramid, with a 100x80 base, and with two sanctuaries at its summit. Near the pyramid rose two monasteries, the god of wind Ehcatl’s sanctuary, a patio used for games of pelota, and the Tzompantli, a macabre place where the skulls of the sacrificed victims were exposed.

The palace of king Montezuma II stood outside the ceremonial centre, and was a luxurious two-floors building with gardens full of exotic plants, swans swimming in artificial lakes, and multicoloured birds singing in the cages. Tenochtitlán was also an important economic hub where more than 25.000 traders came to sell food, textiles, shoes, puma or jaguar skin, tobacco, wood, utensils and handicraft. There was no money, so everything was bartered, usually for cacao or broad beans.

Since the lagoon water could not be drank, Montezuma I had an important aqueduct built, 5 kilometres long from the springs of Chapultepec. Later, also a second, 8 kilometres long aqueduct was built. Since Tenochtitlán suffered from frequent floods, Montezuma I ordered in 1449 the construction of a 16 kilometres long dam, in order to contain the waters of lake Texcoco.

At its full splendour, Tenochtitlán’s population was estimated at 700.000 inhabitants, even though more cautious esteems lower the number to 550.000. In any case, it was the third largest city in the world, after Beijing (700.000) and Hangzhou (600.000).

When Hernán Cortés reached Tenochtitlán in November the 8^th, 1519, he wrote in his diaries that never had he seen a bigger and more efficient city in the world: the streets all had pedestrian walks, no building had any smoke or dirt fouling, shining fairy-tale-like constructions with coloured walls and pensile gardens. The Spanish soldier Bernal Diaz described it as an “enchanted” vision of a magic city with “and cues and buildings rising from the water”. Tenochtitlán really was a perfect city.

Maybe this shocking fact, together with the lust for power and gold, drove the conquistadores, even though they were welcomed with honour and hospitality by king Montezuma, to conquer the city after a bloody battle. On August the 13^th, 1521, the legendary Tenochtitlán was reduced to a pile of rubble and its population exterminated. What was left of the city was dismantled and destroyed. On the ruins of the beautiful metropolis, Mexico City was built.

During the seventies Tenochtitlán’s ruins were brought back to light and some of the most important structures, like the Great Pyramid, are now open for visitors. Today, the Zócalo, Mexico City’s most important plaza, stands on what was once Tenochtitlán’s ceremonial centre, but who knows what such a glorious metropolis of the ancient world could have become without the destructive and cruel impact of the Spanish conquerors. Unfortunately, we will never know…

The ruins of Tenochtitlán

 (Translation by Marco Salvadori)