Viaggio senza ritorno. Per uno studio su Paestum e sul racconto del turismo archeologico

Abstract

This paper is an introduction to a short journey into myth. A route which takes us, in Simmel’s words, from the «face» to the «portrait», from the ruins to the imaginary, and on to the virtual image, less real perhaps, but certainly more true. Paestum, as a place which is both physical and symbolical, magical, is the ideal crossroads for all those disciplines and methods that attempt to retrace the myth, and ritual, of the journey to the ruins. A journey which today is literally sublimated in a virtual encounter with the «eidolon», the restored ruin. And that’s what virtual museums propose today: a change of dimension, no longer a move through space but a move through time. Well-known and more obscure authors are rediscovered, from Felice Gazzola to Goethe, from Delagardett e to Lenormant, to Ungaretti and to the «liquid» contemporaneity.