The long way to places never lived

The fundamental distinction between space and place, in geography, stands in the fact that the former has specific material characters which allow for its objective and univocal definition: the latter, on the contrary, features a more or less complex and manyfold symbolical essence, variously shaped depending on the individual or collective identity with whom it comes into contact. For this reason, several places become, in the perception and subjective dimension of some visitors or their social groups, real “landmarks” of an origin or of an identity. Moreover, if the various forms of “perceived belonging” to these places are developed and shared within family or community traditions, it may well happen that a strong personal and emotional association is established between the individual or group and “places” which have never been “espaces vecus” for them. Considering that some sites, regardless of their physical or territorial organization, retain a more or less powerful “performative” potential towards the preservation and tradition of a certain memorial heritage (whether connected to stories of life, glory or suffering), it then becomes clear how a specific form of “roots tourism” can be the quest for a return to places never actually lived, but strongly felt as landmarks of one’s life. This kind of journey, which deeply involves the experiential and spiritual dimensions of the traveller, may be, at the same time, a return to oneself’s interiorization of memorial heritage, and direct, material contemplation or discovery of a world which had always been imagined, that can now be touched. The process, in which subjective perception, existential dimension and memory of the past interact with the objective and material nature of visited spaces, give rise to various outcomes. A major variable, in this, is wether the “interiorized” places are found to have “survived” somewhat recognizably in the visited reality, or to have suffered heavy transformations. This work will discuss examples of historically-relevant sites which are objects of this peculiar type of “roots tourism”.