CENTRES AND CENTRALITIES
Are not cities about what is central?
How did the political centrality of the Roman Empire operate? Where did Emperors have their official residences? Where did the Senate convene? Where were the capitals of the Empire? How did New Rome last more than old Rome as a capital city?
This article stems from The Centre and the Name, readings in Beirut’s toponymy, a thesis defended at the Sorbonne in May 2018. Hannah Arendt is not very present in studies and research related to geography....
“The King Pepin told the Venetians “You are under my reach and my provision as you are in my country and in my domain”. The Venetians answered him “We want to be subjects of...
A great leap towards reconciliation is made under the pontificate of Pope Francis: among Emperors, Popes, Roman nobles, and great saints, stands a small but central Piazza Martin Lutero: the German theologian of the Reformation is present now among them. He has the “right to exist” on the map. The Catholic Church is, finally, saying: “I hear what you say”, and gives him the right place to be present in her centre.
“Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam” “Ubi Caesar, ibi Roma” (Old Roman proverbs) All roads lead to Rome, to the centre, to the political centre. This Roman principle is well known and today...
Quand Paris s’enrhume, l’Europe prend froid (“When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold“, Prince Klemens von Metternich) Paris is hit for a second time in 2015, and this time the victims are way more...
Once there is a need to build a political centre the “builders” go to space-time to find legitimacy: in the case of Beirut many factors participated in this construction, and one of them is certainly the Justinian one. The Justinian Law was at the base of European civilisation and was quite a pertinent argument in the quest for legitimacy of a new sovereign political centre. We can here ask some further research questions:
Geography is the science which studies space and its construction, not only its physical construction but also its social/political one. In other terms geography can be the discipline in quest for meaning of space. And cartography is the science of interpretation of power relations and communicating it via maps. In the light of these tow definitions we exposed, on this site, the rapports between the political centre, space and representation in some famous maps. First we worked on the maps of Heinrich Bunting: Jerusalem and Europe. Then we saw the Dutch Lion of Visscher.
Today our map is the BOHEMIAE ROSA, by Chr. Vetter, Vienna, 1668, a map representing Bohemia as a rose centred on Prague.
“Au mois d’avril 1768, le chapitre de Notre-Dame de Paris a fait placer dans son parvis, au pied de la tour septentrionale de son église, une pierre triangulaire, du milieu de laquelle sort un...
The Gare de Paris-Nord (aka Gare du Nord) is where trains from Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and the UK arrive in Paris, and it is the last main Parisian RER station before the Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle,...
