Mistakes, not rules! on Rome, politics and heritage

The MAXXI museum, the Spanish Steps, the Roman Forum. These renowned pieces of Rome urban fabric, separated by centuries, have in common the same contemporary fate: the loss of their public role. In recent decades, politics have ignored the fact that their primary function was a social one; this has led to a detachment of the physical city from the social city. Rome thrives on its network of public spaces: such spaces are generated by an accumulation of layers, physical and symbolic, that over centuries have changed meaning, original function, symbolic form. The monumental complex of the “Portico d’Ottavia”, once a sacred space, became a fish market in the Middle Ages and remain so until 1885; it survived as an aggregation hub thanks to a “mistaken function”. Such “mistakes”, unconsciously played the role of conservation, since “conservation acknowledges that change is constant”; they allowed for the regeneration and the survival of entire pieces of Rome. Mistakes are open to chance, make room for new, genuine opportunities. “Mistakes suggest the possibility (and the necessity) of a new kind of rule”. When political choices lead to an imposition of standard rules, our immaterial inheritance is ignored and public space is read only through an aesthetic lens, frozen in a showcase. So the Spanish Steps are no longer the “salotto” of the city, since even sitting is prohibited; the Roman Forum is no longer a place of passage and confluences. Today we are voyeurs of public spaces that can be seen but not used. How can politics turn to the future by turning back to fruitful mistakes?