Ritual movement and the construction of Rome’s sacred landscape: some case studies

The article is aims at exploring the place-making function of ritual movement, that is the movement of individuals or groups on more or less fixed routes for religious causes or purposes (e.g. processions), in Roman religion. It considers some key case studies: Salian rituals, the transvectio equitum and the Lupercalia. Such rituals could actually transform ‘space’ into a (religious) ‘place’; they shaped (and were shaped by) emotions, identity, and memory, by finally becoming embedded in Rome’s sacred landscape. Whereas the routes and stages of such rituals could be more or less fixed or did not undergo frequent or substantial changes with every celebration, the spontaneous and diverse responses to the performance ought to have varied with each iteration; the experience (and the memory) of the ritual would have differed for each person based on his/her level of participation, social status, age, etc. Thus, through frequent enactment and the participants’ continuous engagement, such ritual movements became embedded in the places where they were performed: the relationship among the performers, the built environment and the physical landscape contributed to constantly build up Rome’s sacred landscape, ‘affecting’ space and creating a ‘new’ religious place that would be linked to that ritual and mark Rome forever.