Modena’s Centro Storico in the Literature


 

Currently, few texts examine how memories of the centro storico shape a sense of place in Modena. While some texts examine the centro storico’s symbolic importance nationally, and its local function as the referential heart of city life, there is little substantive literature on Modena’s centro storico, with discourse instead centring around larger cities like Bologna (Dainotto 2003; De Pieri 2012; De Pieri & Scrivano 2004). Palmieri (2013) outlines a municipality-funded, public space redevelopment plan of the 1990s to re-pedestrianise the centre, documenting a focus on using traditional, locally-sourced materials to highlight historic city gates (Palmieri 2013). This text demonstrates that public memory significantly influences the Modenese Municipality’s historic centre management. Additionally, Calzolari’s (2011) exploration of Modena’s nomenclature demonstrates conscious preservation of certain names and events within public memory production. Despite the lack of scholarship regarding Modena, these texts show there is deliberate creation and ongoing development of public memory within Modena, which affects peoples’ interactions with the centro storico.

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Place as an archive of public memory


 

The concepts of place and public memory are central to examining how historical walking tours within the centro storico affect participants’ sense of place. Cresswell (2009) argues that place encompasses an ever-fluctuating combination of materiality (roads, buildings, people, vehicles), meaning (individual, social and communal) and practice (daily human activity). As such, place is a multifaceted concept which human geographer Massey (1991 p.29) identifies as encompassing sites of different identities, histories and unique combinations of local and wider social relations. Grasseni (2009 p. 8) adds that the ‘sensuous experience of being in space and time’ is integral to place. Cresswell (2004, p.85) argues that place and memory are inherently intertwined, with memory being constituted and evoked by the ‘production of places’: through preserving buildings, monuments, objects and plaques. Thus, the complexities and intertwined nature of place and memory as outlined, illustrates the need for more nuanced representations within current literature on Modena’s centro storico.

 

The concept of place as an archive is key to exploring how tour guides and participants interact with the linkages between memory and place. Many scholars analyse place through the frame of an archive, arguing that places serve as living records of the past through their layout, signage and lived patterns of activity (Cresswell 2012; Hetherington 2013; Sheringham 2010). Turkel (2008) argues that the materiality of place enables human traces to carry stories throughout time. Thus, the concept of place as an archive highlights the ability of memories to inscribe meanings on place, as well as the ability of place to endure these stories. Using this archival concept, this research examines how guides draw upon historical traces within the centro storico to share memories, ultimately exploring how this shapes participants’ sense of place.

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A sense of place through walking

 

Understanding what constitutes a sense of place is integral to analysing how tours influence peoples’ relationships with the centro storico. Adams et al. (2017) define a sense of place as the subjective emotional attachment a person has with place, evolving through personal experiences. Within the discipline of environmental psychology, ‘sense of place’ encompasses both place attachment (bonds between persons and place) and place meaning (symbolic meanings people ascribe to places) (Kudryavstev, Stedman & Krasny 2012). Essentially, ‘sense of place’ is the lens through which people experience and make meaning of their experiences in and with place (Adams 2013).

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Many scholars emphasise the importance of walking in shaping peoples’ sense of place. In examining the ‘sociability’ of walking, Lee and Ingold’s (2006) argue that creating walking rhythms with others leads to social engagement between the individual, others and the environment. Accordingly, many scholars utilise walking as an ethnographic methodology in studying place attachment and personal relationships with place (Peyrefitte 2012; Pink 2007b; Springgay & Truman 2018). Heritage tourism scholars argue that historical walking tour guides shape peoples’ interactions and perceptions of place through route selection, emphasis and storytelling (Gibson 2010; Lew 2017). Adams et al. (2017) add that exploratory activities such as walking tours can develop new meanings and attachments to place. Thus, despite Modenese residents not being tourists, the nature of historical walking tours is powerful in shaping perceptions and experiences of place, an important consideration in conducting this research.