The Garden and the Scene of Power

Here, the author is dealing with the dual valence of social and aesthetic representations of a symbolic place, the garden, and of its links with collective memory. She will approach the argument from a variety of perspectives that can be summarized as follows: (a) the social and aesthetic representation of the sacred (paradise) in the hortus conclusus —the “geometrization” of space begins with the stability of the Italic pagus; (b) the labyrinth, the social and aesthetic representation of the garden as exorcism, which opposes the hybris of power; (c) the social and aesthetic representation of power in royal gardens (profane); (d) the social and aesthetic representation of collective memory in cemeteries—these are a specific model of hortus conclusus, entrusted with collective memories; and (e) the new stimulus to collective memory by the restoration of former industrial areas (creation of garden-paradises). Today, these areas are the new horti conclusi of collective memory.