Border, nomos, identity

Abstract

The so-called carta lapidaria, or stone tablet, dated circa 1118 B.C.E, with which Bernardino Conte, son of Bernardo degli Ardengheschi, bequeathed all his lands and property to his son Rustico so that he would transfer them to the church of SantAntimo is the contract carved into a stone altar through which was sanctified a border, an actual margin within Sienese territory; one that identified, for the first time, the substantial form of territorial dominions within medieval Tuscany.

The culture of the fragment understood as independent, legal, and physical produced a magnificent wealth of singular examples that helped to develop the beauty of the Italian landscape.

This condition archetypal within relationships between human beings and things led to the creation of Castelnuovo dellAbate, a village beside SantAntimo that developed around the castle serving the abbey below it.

Corte Francigena is a residential expansion project adjacent to the village, which assembles the principles that generated local tradition by translating into substance the memory that conveys it.