L’Alpe 16 - Confine e frontiera

There are at least two things to know before delving into the complex, enigmatic, magmatic and fascinating world of "frontiers", that is, those "lines" - political, economic, social, cultural - which according to common thinking delimit spaces, and delimit them they separate them, or paradoxically bring them closer. The first thing to know is that there are borders and there are frontiers. Two different concepts. According to Piero Zanini's definition, appropriately reported by Matteo Puttilli in this issue of «L'Alpe», if the border can «be conceived as a demarcation line that clearly separates two contiguous spaces, the border instead refers to different images: that of "end of the earth", of "ultimate limit beyond which to venture", or that of "front": facing (or against) someone. The border cannot be represented through a clear separation line: rather it holds the characteristics of zonality, and can be described as a space of overlap. The border does not draw "a line", but defines a band, a fringed area. The border is not a certain fact, but it is a constantly evolving "place". The second thing to know is that the border and frontier of the Alps have always changed over time, and do not correspond at all - except by recent political convention - to the "natural" lines of the mountain ridges. What for the Romans was just an obstacle to overcome - the Alpine chain, therefore the mountains -, in other historical eras became a reason for union for populations who had the same problems and the same hopes, only to return to division after Utrecht ("the waters that flow down to each State") and then union, utopian and unpostponable - in the best intentions of a united Europe. Having said (and understood) this, all that remains is to delve into the history of borders, which is the history of geographical "borders", certainly, but above all mental ones. Enrico Camanni