Key points
- The Architecture of the City (1966) proposes understanding the city as an artifact built up over time.
- Rossi criticises the modernism that transformed cities without regard for their history and culture.
- Persistences are the elements — monuments, layouts — that endure and structure the city.
The Architecture of the City (L'architettura della città, 1966), by Aldo Rossi (1931–1997), is one of the fundamental works of twentieth-century architectural and urban theory. Rossi proposes seeing the city as a historical artifact: every building and structure bears witness to a continuous temporal and cultural process. Against approaches that treat the city merely as functional or economic space, he argues that urban architecture must be understood in historical terms, as an expression of time. That perspective, influenced by philosophy and sociology, changed how the city is studied and planned.
Against the city that erases its history
Rossi criticises the modernist tendencies that sought rapid growth and transformation of cities without attending to their history or cultural context. Cities are not a collection of buildings and functional spaces but an accumulation of human experience, culture and collective memory: an artifact in which history shows itself tangibly in streets, squares, monuments and everyday structures. To understand a city one must analyse how its architecture reflects the temporal and cultural layers that have shaped it.
Persistences
One of his key concepts is that of persistences, which he takes from the French geographer Marcel Poëte. Some elements of the city — certain monuments, historic buildings, layouts — endure over time and resist the economic or functional changes around them; they become reference points for inhabitants and visitors and give visual and cultural continuity to the urban fabric. Architecture, Rossi notes, does not only answer a society's immediate needs: it is a bridge between past and present.
Typological analysis
Another central aspect is typological analysis. Each building or urban space must be studied in relation to its architectural type, the form and function it has kept over time: the courtyard house, the closed block, the covered market. That approach makes it possible to identify recurring patterns in the evolution of cities and offers a solid basis for planning. Understanding urban typologies is essential, for Rossi, to create cities that respect both their past and their present needs and to avoid contextless development.
The locus
Rossi also introduces the concept of locus, the relationship between a specific place and the events that occur in it. Each urban site has an identity of its own, shaped by its history, its architecture and the activities that have defined it; the locus is not only a physical space but a symbolic one, charged with meaning. That approach invites architects and planners to consider the intrinsic value of places when planning new developments, instead of treating all land as interchangeable.
The Architecture of the City offers a revolutionary perspective on architecture and urbanism. By treating the city as a historical and cultural artifact, Rossi rejects the simplistic solutions that ignore context and urban memory and invites reflection on the past, respect for existing typologies and attention to the locus in design. Its impact is lasting: much of the rehabilitation of historic centres and of the urbanism of the European city since the 1970s starts from this book.
Frequently asked questions
What does Rossi mean by the city as a historical artifact?
That the city is not a functional problem to be solved from scratch but a collective construction accumulated over time, made of elements that persist — monuments, streets, building types — and carry the memory of those who lived there. Designing in it requires reading that history before intervening.
What is the locus in Aldo Rossi?
The singular relationship between a specific place and the events that have occurred in it. For Rossi every site has a character of its own, the product of its geography and history, which architecture should recognise rather than treat all land as interchangeable.
