At the Books and Museum on April 6, 2025 at the monumental complex of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples the essay by Valeria Pezza: The invention of the house. The domestic order of the polis, Christian Marinotti editions, Milan 2025, 120 pages.«Whoever lives in a house built inside a city is like a pilgrim who proceeds – as the nineteenth-century Russian mystic John of Kronstadt said – with a traveling staff and a wayfarer's clothing: when he reaches the end of his life, the door will open wide and he will finally be at home, "because we have no lasting city here, but we seek the one to come" (Hebrews 13, 14)» Review by Pasquale Giustiniani. The provocation that comes from the structure of the Greek cityAmong the many thanks for this remarkable publication - created by Valeria Pezza with the contribution of DiARC: Department of Architecture-University of Naples Federico II -,((⏱️=400)) you can also read those that the Author wanted to dedicate «to the entire community of Pollica, a land where you can still see something of the Greek world». In fact, each of these rich and dense pages of Valeria Pezza's essay refers to the archaeological traces, or rather to their significant stones and their references to the thoughts and works of their creators, builders and inhabitants.That of the houses of the Greek cities in the so-called colonies and in the sites of classical Greece, is a world similar to the one in front of which we can place, together, both archaeology and the history of architecture and topography; but also cultural anthropology and the history of ideas, as illustrated and demonstrated by the acute and erudite effort of deciphering, conducted for us by Valeria Pezza in these pages. Thus, the ancient stones of Akragas (Agrigento) can become the figure of an ambivalence typical of the complex and multifactorial process that is appropriately called "invention of the house". At a first, but superficial, glance, "the domestic dimension appears removed and devalued, as it is not based on the heroic gesture, on the public and visible exaltation of power, conflict and strength" (page 11). Instead, as we read in the Foreword to this volume (pages 7 to 18), the starting question should be formulated in accordance with what the title of the volume recalls (moreover enriched by numerous graphs and tables): "When was that repeatable and repeated house invented that presides over the construction of the city itself as a place not so much of religious, political, military power, but of the home of its citizens?" (page 7).This explains why, integrating the consolidated point of view that correlated the architecture of the classical polis to the so-called political sphere, «it was urgent to question those forms, their meaning and their nature, to ask what domestic dimension, to what daily rituals they gave rise, measure and space, and in what vision of the world. Then, why so much silence? What meaning did the house have in that origin and what does the house mean for us today?» (page 9).From here, a different and intriguing perspective takes shape, excellently pursued by Valeria Pezza, which helps to re-signify the very meaning of political action - theorized in the political writings of classical Greek philosophers - and to clarify in its various reverberations the relationship between the private (domestic), often relegated to the sphere of irrelevance, and the public (political, also in a military and warlike sense, but today also social and cultural): «Surprisingly, together with the question about the times and ways of the invention of the home for all, the disturbing one emerged about this incomprehensible condemnation to the insignificance» of the private, if understood only as "relegated to what is meaningless". This is why we must ask ourselves, continues the Author: «has it really always been like this? And now does it make sense for us to deprive of value the daily life that marks the life of each one, or is it precisely inside the home that a politics lives and can mature that is not reduced to the exercise and self-representation of power?» (page 10).And furthermore: «So why this silence about the home? Why has that domestic world that originally defined the οἰκεῖος (oikèios) as an intimate, personal, familiar place, each person’s own space, ended up being qualified in common language only in the negative, as deprived of value and meaning, removed from awareness and thought?» (page 13). If, to the structural error, corresponds a previous error of thought, it could be examined, as the Author now helps us to do, through a further question: «If the personal is the first level of politics, why is it kept silent?» (page 14). Not a “den” or “place to take refuge: new meanings of the invention of the house((⏱️=500))More than a den to take refuge in; more than an area or place without political-social relevance, the house, with its various classical reverberations ...
