Ancona, that Disappeared Forever

Ancona, the hub of history, the aperture and pole of events, the epicentre of restlessness and a sense of loss, the arena of becoming eternally unsolved, a city where existence is besieged. Ancona displays itself at night, in the expanse of the sky pierced by “suspended and invisible dotted blades of light”, among thin clouds of fog, like a swamp suffocated by underground urges and indifference, fl oating among the creatures of the night and the alliance with the silence of interior spaces. In this urban topography, the obsession is consumed of the protagonist devoured by the need “to fi nd a serious reason for life”, to discover a truth that brings pulsation and breath to the yoke of habits, duty, earnings, anguish and terror. An obscure sense to existence, that is perhaps hidden in the folds of the city, congealed in the buildings and roads, in those “small low houses in ill-famed streets, where he and his friends gathered, chattering and from which they emerged after midnight”, or perhaps, “down there by the sea, where after a day in the offi ce, he sometimes used to go to wait for the fi shing boats to come in”, or “rather in the Hebrew street, where he used to go every day doing the same job every day”, or perhaps the truth dwells “in some distant place, where he has never been, other than in his dreams?” Puccini’s Ancona vibrates like a tuning fork that transmits to men its rough and instinctive music, inspiring them to the tumultuous vocation of taking action, contemplating, listening, suffering, living and resisting. A humanism of the city that embraces its creatures and at the same time crushes them with the subtle noose of furious suffering, where the human body visibly becomes the body of the city, defacement of the buildings and the ruins of the walls open a fracture in the soul of the defenceless community and on the sensitive skin of the inhabitants. Places mark confl icts and misery, aspirations and sacrifi ce, turmoil and delirium, coming alive with the essence of those who live there, guarding the tangle of emotions, the primitive and authentic human substratum, mitigating pulsations with the constant song of their nature, with the frank verism of their serene substance. “They were streets just a few steps from the centre; there you could sing and your song reached out; women could bicker with each other from their windows, doors and shops and before the police had time to come, could say everything they wanted to say, undisturbed”. In the maze of juxtaposed architecture serenely doing its utmost according to needs, in the dense weave of architraves and balconies, in those vivid and multicoloured middle ages close to the popular Hebrew quarter, a thousand year old wisdom for centuries has dictated its principles, with more sense of civility and justice, with more sharp harmony than that contained in all the urban planning manuals in the world. “There was very little air and sunshine in those stretches of road; but from time immemorial the people who lived there had arranged things so that nothing of that tiny patch of sunshine that arrived at a certain time of the day, that breath of air which blew at a certain time of the evening, would be lost or wasted: it was there that clothes were hung to dry, pots of fl owers placed and the rosy faces of children appeared. Turrets, raised who knows how on roof ridges or in certain wall recesses; shelves and ledges fi xed, who knows with what diffi culty, under the windows, on the architraves of the main doors, terraces, balconies and porches... And everywhere men, women, children, people: at times housed haphazardly, perhaps squeezed in like sardines; but who of all these people remained indoors, hidden away? Their real home was the road, the square, the alley; and it was outdoors that they worked, chatted, laughed, sang and even cried.”