Lisbona e lo spessore dell’acqua. Le “archeologie vive” delle antiche darsene attivatori della città contemporanea

For a long time during the Twentieth century, Lisbon has seen a deep contradiction and ambiguity about which there has been much discussion in the last decades: the full conflict between the city and the port. Just in the modern period, in fact, has occurred a ‘functional’ separation between the city and its banks, a fracture in the strong relationship between the city and the water that had its roots in nature and history. The Expo of 1998, an event that represented an unprecedented opportunity for urban regeneration, guided the reconstruction of this fracture not only through the recovering and requalifying of the port areas, until then occupied for the “hard” industrial and logistic activities, but through the “re-emerging” of the ancient port system forms making its archeology “operating” in the new configuration of the contemporary public space and, in a more general sense, of the new image of the city.