• 1 I am deeply thankful to Claudia Beltrão, Gian Franco Chiai, Maik Patzelt, Mario Pesce, Francesca Pr (...)
• 2 Favro 2014, 85.

1It is common knowledge that religion permeated the life of the Romans: banquets, rituals, festivals, sacrifices, and prayers were performed every day, both privately and publicly, from the humblest house to the most magnificent temple. One of the most important and enthralling among such diverse ritual practices was undoubtedly ritual movement, i.e. the movement of individuals or groups on a more or less fixed route for religious causes or purposes. Religious images usually played a primary role there. This is closely linked to the general idea that movement had a deep meaning in Roman society and culture: “To move was a performance of identity. In a single glance, the speed, bearing, gestures, escorts, route, and time of day revealed a Roman’s position in society–or his aspirations”.2 In what follows I shall argue that this kind of ritual movement could have a key place-making role, which was able to actually transform ‘space’ into a (religious) ‘place’ in different respects and meanings: socially, culturally, and physically.

• 3 Casey 2001, 404. For a complete and up-to-date survey of the history of Western concepts of space, (...)
• 4 Casey 2001, 406.
• 5 Cf. Casey 1996, 33-34: “The very word culture meant “place tilled” in Middle English, and the same (...)
• 6 Casey 2008, 44-45.
• 7 Feldman Weiss 2012, 52.
• 8 Heidegger 1977; cf. Basso 1996, 54. This can be also related to Henri Lefebvre’s thoughts on social (...)

2First of all, ‘space’ and ‘place’ should be distinguished and considered as two fundamentally different orders of reality:3 the first is all-encompassing and allows things to be located within it, whereas the second, being more than simply the reciprocal influence between people and the world, is “their constitutive co-ingredience”, such that each is essential to the being of the other.4 ‘Place’ is ‘cultural’5, a basic unit of lived experience and a nexus of human praxis;6 it is “produced by human engagements and associations with the world”.7 Continued interaction with the material world is thus an essential component in the act of place-making: space acquires meaning only through intimate connections established between the people and the places they inhabit (cf. the concept of Wohnen, ‘dwelling’).8

• 9 On the concept of religious agency cf. Rüpke 2018b.
• 10 Cf. Rüpke 2018b: “Religious activity is present when and where, in a particular situation, at least (...)

3Having made clear how we should consider the concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’, and how we should distinguish between them on a general level, let us dwell more closely upon ancient Rome. What was the general ‘stage’ of the place-making process that could actually create a (religious) place at Rome? First of all, this space should be considered as different from both the natural and the built environment. We could define it as ‘lived ritual space’: lived because it is made significant by religious agents9 and by the performance itself; ritual because it is linked to ritual performances, religious activities to be distinguished from other every day and civic ones, contributing to the characterization of a place in other ways.10

• 11 Cancik 1985-1986. On the concept of landscape, and whether and to what extent it can be applied to (...)

4Moreover, we can draw on the concept of ‘sacred landscape’, put forward by Hubert Cancik, to define the cultural and the physical result of continuous religious activity and performance, that is all single places where rites were performed as well as monuments and temples celebrating and/or recalling such rites. Rome’s ‘sacred landscape’ is thus to be considered a system of connected signs, whose knowledge represented the collective (religious) memory of the Roman community.11

• 12 Rüpke 2017, 110. It is worth mentioning in this connection also the so-called ‘spatial turn’, that (...)
• 13 Feldman Weiss 2012, 51.

5Jörg Rüpke recently argued that “large urban societies need practices that craft place by relating people and space, disrupting continuous space, selectively appropriating and that such services could be provided by religion”.12 Rituals and religious performance thus played a decisive role in shaping the urban space as a whole: “performance should be considered a vital element within the urban built environment and integral to the creation of city as a place”.13 In conclusion we can say that ritual movement, activity and performance: contribute to the characterization and the transformation of space into a place; shape and become part of the sacred (and cultural) landscape; become embedded in the physical landscape.

• 14 On the Salian priesthood see more recently (with previous bibliography): Rüpke 1998; Habinek 2005, (...)

6The main case-study I am going to consider as regards the place-making function of ritual movement at Rome is the ritual performed by the Salian priesthood in several festivals.14 As we shall see, its celebration through the centuries had a relevant impact on Rome’s sacred landscape. Moreover, it also played a role in shaping and reinforcing a sense of identity and belonging in the Roman people, both during the performance, by arousing different emotions in the audience, and after, by fostering memory processes (oral, written, monumental), by finally becoming embedded in Rome’s sacred landscape, thus creating ‘new’ religious places.

• 15 Pol. 21.13.11: “[The Salians] are, as I said in my book on the Roman constitution, one of the three (...)
• 16 Verr. Flacc. ap. Fest. p. 326: Salios a saliendo et saltando dictos esse quamvis dubitari non debea (...)
• 17 Alonso Fernández 2016b, 316: tripudium is “normally used in religious or military contexts, and ref (...)
• 18 Cf. in general Alonso Fernández 2011; Sarullo 2014; Alonso Fernández 2016a; Prescendi forthcoming.
• 19 On the Carmen Saliare, cf. Guittard 2007, 61-97; Habinek 2005. The best and most comprehensive work (...)
• 20 Cf. Rüpke 2019, 25-26.
• 21 On the Salian armour and weapons, see Schäfer 1980 and Maiuri 2009, with previous bibliography.
• 22 On the visibility of religious specialists in Ancient Rome, see Rüpke 2018a: in the case of easily (...)

7Among the most ancient and important Roman priesthoods,15 the Salians were divided into two colleges (sodalitates) of twelve priests each, the Palatini and the Collini (or Agonales or Agonenses). They had two main religious tasks. The first was to perform dances: their name came as a matter of fact from salire, ‘to jump’; other words used to describe the dances are: saltus (saltatus, saltare, etc.),16 tripudium,17 exsultatio, as well as (red)amptruare.18 The other task was to sing the Carmen Saliare.19 Salian celebrations were part of a ritual that lasted several days in March,20 the Salians performing their dances at different festivals such as the Equirria (14 March) and the Quinquatrus (19 March), and others. They wore a very archaic armour21 and carried the ancilia, that is bilobate (or ‘eight-shaped’) shields, a panoply never actually carried by any Roman warrior at any time in history: that made them among the most recognizable priests of Roman religion.²²

• 23 Rüpke 1998.
• 24 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.71.4.
• 25 Torelli 1990.
• 26 Rüpke 1998, 205.
• 27 Pol. 21.13.7-14; Livy 37.33.7; Rüpke 2008, 642.
• 28 SHA Aur. 4.2-4; Rüpke 2008, 555-556.
• 29 Michael Crawford’s assumption is based on numismatic evidence only. In the second issue of Caesar’s (...)

8As already stated, Salian rituals played a relevant role in shaping the identity of the Romans. First, the priesthood was from the beginning, and always remained, a patrician one. This means that Rome’s most distinguished and ancient families had to negotiate for, and find an agreement on, the co-optation of their young scions.23 The priesthood was in fact a very prestigious first step in the cursus, as usually the co-optation took place at a very young age, with both parents alive.24 Some even argued that originally Salian rituals were a form of initiation for all young Romans,25 whereas others assume that, after the Liciniae Sextiae laws, the exclusive patrician institution was ‘rationalized’ into a priesthood.26 Many illustrious Romans had been Salians, such as Scipio Africanus27 and Marcus Aurelius.28 Michael Crawford has argued that Julius Caesar became a Salian before his father’s death in 85 BCE.29

• 30 On the ancilia see Colonna 1991; Hartmann 2010, 548-553.
• 31 On the pignora imperii see Ferri 2010, 203-206.
• 32 See esp. Plut. Num. 13.1-6; Ov. Fast. 3.327-392.
• 33 While Tullus Hostilius established the Collini/Agonales/Agonenses: see Livy 1.20.4; 1.27.7; Dion. H (...)
• 34 With some caution we could apply to Salian rituals the same observation that Rüpke (Rüpke 2012, 309 (...)
• 35 Cf. Habinek 2005, 27 (on the Salian song): “It is a song of the unfolding of Roman history from its (...)

9But how could Salian rituals affect the identity of the Roman people as a whole? To answer this question, we must go back to the ancilia, the bilobate shields carried by the dancing priests.30 Even if these shields did not bear any carving or relief, they can be considered as one of Rome’s religious images par excellence. They were part of the so-called pignora imperii, a group of religious objects whose safekeeping was directly connected to Rome’s safety and power.31 What made the ancilia so important is that among these objects they were the only ones not to have foreign origin, like the Palladium and Magna Mater’s black stone. According to the tradition, the original holy shield (the others were copies made by the legendary blacksmith Mamurius Veturius to prevent theft) was given by Jupiter himself to Numa Pompilius,³² who established the Salii Palatini on purpose to guard these shields.33 Salian rites were the only occasion in which the Roman people – as the dances were performed for several days and in public places34 – could actually see the shields with their own eyes and be reassured about Rome’s safety; therefore, they would celebrate it together and together feel part of its prosperity and power.35

• 36 See e.g. Sabbatucci 1988, 87-97; but cf. Rüpke 2019, 26.
• 37 Cf. Habinek 2005, 28: “Its double chorus, the kinetic “call and response” of the praesul and vulgus(...)

10On another level, as Salian rites took place in March, we cannot help but noticing how significant this month was for the Romans, as it was the first month of the archaic calendar and it marked the opening of warfare activities.36 It is not by chance that it derived its name from one of the most relevant gods worshipped by the Romans, Mars. Salian celebrations therefore celebrated, protected, and opened the passage from a year to another and from peace to war: this would affect and strengthen on a yearly basis the identity of every Roman, male and female, from the humblest to the most powerful one, and boosted their sense of community.37

• 38 On the ‘history of emotions’, see Febvre 1941; MacMullen 2003; Kaster 2005; Rosenwein 2006; Matt 20 (...)
• 39 As Rüpke (2018a, 94) argues, the more ‘uncommon’ was the ritual the more was likely that ritual act (...)
• 40 The Arval Brethren also performed a dance based on a ternary rhythm (tripudium); nevertheless, they (...)
• 41 Quint. Inst. 1.6.40.
• 42 Varro Ling. 7.1.2-3; cf. Cic. Orat. 3.51; Hor. Epist. 2.1.86; Symm. Ep. 3.44; Sid. Apoll. Epist. 8- (...)
• 43 Epist. 15.4
• 44 Catull. 17.5. On Colonia-Verona, cf. Cenerini 1989.

11The emotional factor must have played also a crucial part at every Salian celebration.38 Emotions were raised not only by the sight of the ancilia, as we as seen, but also by the extraordinary features of the performance: it was not every day’s sight to watch fully armed young Romans sing, dance, and noisily clash their weapons.³⁹ This was in fact the most important and almost only example of ritual dance in Roman religion;40 moreover, during the dances the Salians sang the most ancients hymns in Latin literature, written in such an archaic language41 that at a later stage the Salians themselves were not able to fully understand them anymore.42 Their unusual sound would complement the impressive dancing movements and sounds to affect and deeply impress the audience. Emotions could be aroused by other remarkable effects and the other of such rites as well: Seneca states that the Salians danced and jumped so heavily that he compared them to the fullones.43 At one stage of Salian rituals this could deeply impress the audience: I am referring to Rome’s first bridge, the Sublicius, made entirely of wood. Catullus was so impressed by the sight of full-armoured Romans heavily dancing and jumping on that bridge that he hoped that his city of birth, Verona, would get a new bridge so strong that it could withstand Salian dances!44

• 45 Assmann 1992, 60.
• 46 Assmann 1992, 60: “Sogar und gerade ganz Landschaften können als Medium des kulturellen Gedächtniss (...)
• 47 Nora 1984-1993. Another crucial starting point for Assmann’s work is the concept of ‘collective mem (...)
• 48 La Rocca 2012, 46.

12This rather amusing quotation is also useful to prove how such rituals could affect memory. The city was in fact a privileged place of memory. Jan Assmann has thoroughly studied the connection between physical place and memory, resulting in a so called ‘mnemotope’ (Gedächtnisort).45 Cultural memory ‘semiotizes’ certain places, usually marking them with monuments.46 This remark is in debt to the concept of lieu de mémoire, theorized by Pierre Nora: such ‘places of memory’ do not necessarily represent a topographical place (as e.g. the Lupercal in Rome) but can be linked to other aspects of memory, such as a feast or a symbol.47 Processions can be considered therefore as veritable ‘places of memory’.48

• 49 Jonathan Smith argues that ritual action serves as a nexus for the intersection of people and place (...)
• 50 Feldman Weiss 2012, 56. Cf. Favro 2014, 93 (referring to triumphal parades): “Dynamic triumphal par (...)

13The celebration of Salian rites throughout the centuries not only became part of the memory of every Roman who was able to take part to them (as Salian himself, as relative or friend, as audience, etc.), but it would be also deeply linked and associated with the place where the rite was performed.49 Whereas the processional route was fixed, the spontaneous and diverse responses to the performance must have varied with each subsequent iteration; the experience and the memory of the ritual would have differed for each person based on his/her level of participation, civic position, social status, age, and any number of other relevant factors.50 As a consequence, through frequent enactment of the performance and the participants’ continuous engagement with the environment, the ritual, and consequently Salian places, would become part of Rome’s sacred landscape, both as ‘places of memory’ (i.e. ‘immaterial), and topographical ones (i.e. ‘physical’).

• 51 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.70.2.

14But which places became unquestionably ‘Salian’? Although, as already noted, we do not know the exact route and number of stations of the procession, we know that the Salians performed their rites in some of Rome’s most important, symbolic and time-honoured sites, such as the Comitium, the Regia, the Capitoline Hill, and the Sublicius Bridge. Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that they danced “through the city [...] and in many other private and public places”.51

• 52 Colonna 1991, 91-94.

15The Regia can be considered a veritable ‘Salian’ place as it was deeply marked by the strong link with Salian rituals. This was the building where the ancilia were usually kept (in the part called sacrarium Martis): in the rebuilding by Cn. Domitius Calvinus in 36 BCE, after a fire, the sacred shields were carved in a relief inside52 as to constantly remind one of the main reasons for the Regia to be.

• 53 Chioffi 1996. Festus probably refers to them in a corrupt passage (439 L): Salios, quibus per omnis (...)
• 54 Cic. Att. 5.9.1: epulati essemus saliare in modum; cf. Ap. Met. 4.22.7; 7.10.21; Porph. Hor. carm. (...)

16Anyhow, there were some buildings especially connected to the Salians: the mansiones.⁵³ We read in our sources that there was one at every stage of Salian rituals: at the end of each day the priests used the mansiones to lay down their armour, weapons and holy shields; we may also assume that they played some part in the lavish meal they enjoyed.⁵⁴ As we do not find any connection to other rituals elsewhere, we must assume that the mansiones were used for Salian rituals only. Nevertheless, they stood for the rest of the year as an everlasting Salian place, ‘mnemotope’ and trademark, so that the performance of the priests of Mars would constantly mark Rome.

17Of course, changes could (and did) occur. Augustus could not have built the Temple of Mars Ultor in his eponymous Forum without associating it to the Salians, the priests associated with the god. As a matter of fact, the temple became one of the stages of their rituals, as we know from an episode regarding Claudius in Suetonius:

• 56 CIL 6.2158: Mansiones saliorum Palatino / rum, a veteribus ob armorum magnalium / custodiam constit (...)

19The mansiones remained an important part of Rome’s religious identity for centuries. There is a noteworthy source in this regard, an inscription found at the Temple of Mars Ultor.56 The inscription is as follows:

• 57 Ferri 2015. Cf. Cavallero 2016, 125 for a proposal about its original position.
• 58 Amm. Marc. 16.10.1-21; cf. Symm. Relat. 3.7; Conti 2007, 365-367.
• 59 CIL 3.3705 = ILS 732; see also Stepper 2003, 197-201.
• 60 Symm. Relat. 3.4; Ambr. Epist. 18.32; on the ‘Altar of Victory controversy’, cf. Lizzi Testa 2015.

20I have suggested elsewhere that this restoration could have been made on the occasion of Constantius II official arrival to Rome in 357 CE.57 It was the first visit of an emperor to Rome after a long time, thirty-one years after his father Constantine’s adventus in 326. The emperor paid honour to the Roman senators and appointed many nobiles to the traditional priesthoods;⁵⁸ he also retained the title of pontifex maximus.⁵⁹ Nevertheless, at the same time he limited the pagan cult: for the first time the Altar of Victory was removed from the Curia.⁶⁰

• 61 Rüpke 2008, 949; see also PLRE I, Rufinus 15; CIL 10.5061 = ILS 1271; CIL 6.32040 and p. 4806; Grani (...)

21Most likely, there were no Salian priests anymore: the last attested Salius Palatinus is C. Vettius Cossinius Rufinus, who left the priesthood in 306, before becoming proconsul of Achaia, then praefectus urbis in 315/316.61 As a matter of fact, the inscription mentioned above states that the mansiones had long been neglected. Nevertheless, the places that the pontiffs cared to restore at their expenses were Rome’s most relevant religious structures; among them ‘places’ that through ceaseless and centuries-long performance, that is by involving identity, emotions and memory processes had inextricably become and were still conceived as the Salian places par excellence: the mansiones.

• 62 Edwards (1996, 30) has pointed out that in the Republic the urban landscape was Rome’s chief histor (...)

22Therefore, from lived ritual space (as defined in the first paragraph), ‘Salian’ places were created to become part of Rome’s sacred landscape and to be remembered and ‘present’ for a very long time.62 This is a striking example of how the attachment to place at Rome was closely tied to collective memory, a stream of tradition reified in rituals, images, places, monuments, and texts. This was so deep that once a new religious place was created, its meaning, associations and resonance would last for long time, even after the disappearance of the ritual. It was not too important if the Salians were no longer active at that moment; the religious image of Rome the emperor had to receive was meant to be the most ‘traditional’, i.e. ‘Roman’, as possible: in this regard, there were not many religious places as linked to Rome’s identity and to the memory of its glorious past as Salian ones.

• 63 Feldman Weiss 2012, 53.
• 64 Feldman Weiss 2012, 59, referring to Alcock 2002.
• 65 Feldman Weiss 2012, 59.

23Salian rituals are an effective example of how repeated (ritual) action can shape the perception of the place as well as the place itself: human actions and engagements make place; at the same time place shapes human identity.⁶³ Moreover, “through physical engagement with place, new meanings and memories are created, while previously held associations are maintained through sustained interaction”.64 The setting of the performance, what I have defined as lived ritual space and sacred landscape, provides the context within which the ritual becomes meaningful65 and that can finally ‘create’ a new religious place.

• 66 For a general and long-term history of Trastevere, cf. Ermini Pani, Travaglini 2010.
• 67 Pesce 2014; Pesce 2017.
• 68 On the Corsican community in 15-16^th century Rome, cf. Esposito 2010, 324-328.
• 69 Several foundation myths of Marian sanctuaries are connected to water (and storms): cf. Faranda 200 (...)

24I would like to briefly consider another example of ritual movement in order to try to capture more effectively the process considered in what precedes, this time ‘in the making’. The procession dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel takes place every year in Rome, in the rione (quarter, district) Trastevere66. It is the most notable part of a festival starting on 16 July, day of the liturgical feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and lasting several days.67 It has been celebrated since the first half of the 16^th century, after in 1535 some Corsican fishermen68 found a wooden statue of the Virgin at the mouth of the Tiber after a storm: this is also why this Madonna bears the epithet of ‘Fiumarola’ (the ‘River’s’ Madonna).69 More precisely, the festival and the procession date back to 1543, the year of the institution of the Confraternity ‘del SS.mo Sacramento e Maria SS.ma del Carmine’, from 1605 an Archconfraternity.

• 70 Cf. Russo 2020 for another very good example of a ‘periphery’ (in different meanings: urban, symbol (...)
• 71 Livy 3.13.10; 8.14.5; 26.34.7; Gell. NA 20.1.46-47. The first mention is in the Twelve Tables alrea (...)

25This festival has always been very important for the Roman people in general and for the people of Trastevere in particular. The Madonna carried in the procession is considered as the protector of the quarter and its people: she is also called ‘Signora de Noantri’, ‘Our own Lady’, literally ‘Lady of us others’, – ‘others’ meaning the natives, the ‘Trasteverini’, in opposition to all others coming from outside, with primal and special reference to those on the other side of the Tiber.70 The river has been a significant and recognizable border since the most ancient times: the name of the quarter itself derives from trans Tiberim, that is ‘beyond the Tiber’.71

• 72 Azzena 2010, 3.
• 73 Litus Etruscum (Hor. Carm. 1.2.13); Lydia ripa (Stat. Silv. 4.4.3); ripa Veientana (CIL 6.31547; 31 (...)
• 74 Three out of the twenty-five Christian tituli of 4^th century Rome were situated in Trastevere: Iuli (...)
• 75 Azzena 2010, 3.

26This ‘otherness’ of Trastevere, “area di margine per definizione (al di là di un muro d’acqua)”72 was part of Rome’s history from the very beginning, the right side of the river being considered for centuries the ‘Etruscan’ bank.73 The quarter was included in the administrative reform of Rome by Augustus as the last of the fourteen regiones (from which rione), the Regio XIV Transtiberim, the only one on the right bank of the river. In Antiquity Trastevere hosted lower-class people, mainly tradesmen, craftsmen, and foreigners, such as Jews and Christians:74 a “ghetto, casbah e dock, quartiere di “extra-comunitari” ante litteram”.75 This ‘difference’ from the rest of the city, this ‘segregation’ from its center, became deeply rooted in Trastevere’s ‘identity’:

• 77 Buttitta 2012, 698.
• 78 ‘To-be-dressed simulacrum’, a kind of statues of Madonnas and saints built (also) with the purpose (...)

27As for the place-making function of ritual movement, it should be noticed that the images carried through a place on the occasion of a festival “hanno la funzione di sacralizzare e tutelare gli spazi e i tempi della vita sociale ricostituendoli in cosmos”.77 During the festival the image is transfigured and animated; it actually becomes the figure it represents, such as the Virgin or a saint. Thus, every place where the statue is carried, passes by, or is kept is marked by the ritual and becomes linked with it to different degrees. As for the case study considered here, in the first half of the 16^th century Cardinal Scipione Borghese built a chapel (later destroyed) on purpose to keep the wooden statue. The statue used nowadays, a 19^th century wooden ‘simulacro da vestire’,78 is kept in the church of St. Agatha. Another relevant Madonna Fiumarola’s ‘place’ is the church of St. Chrysogonus, where the statue is hosted for some days during the festival and where there is a chapel dedicated to our Lady of Mount Carmel; it was built in 1543, the same year of the establishment of the Confraternity. Nevertheless, the entire quarter: the main streets (Viale Trastevere, Via della Lungaretta, etc.), the aforementioned churches (and others such as St. Mary, Trastevere’s main church), and the Tiber itself are touched by this ritual movement.

• 79 Pesce 2014, 308-311. Cf. in general Slater 2011; Simonicca 2016.

28Intense emotions were and are still raised by the procession, which takes place in the course of different days and stages, both on the Tiber and in the streets of Trastevere. A specific stage, when the statue is carried on a boat, is something unique for a European capital, and it is likely to stay in the memory of all participants, from natives to tourists passing by. As for the latter, it must be noted that in recent years the face of the quarter has underwent a process of change, under the combined pressure of mass tourism and ongoing gentrification:79 this has led to increased housing costs and a general impoverishment of the local cultural and social heritage. This is of course also affecting the procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: after continued performance has made it into something deeply linked to Trastevere and ‘lived’ primarily by natives, the ritual is slowly changing, apparently turning into a more ‘folkloric’ and touristic tradition. An increasing number people ‘from the outside’ take part in it; the quarter is usually so crowded that many end up attending by pure chance.

• 80 Simonicca 2016, 512-514.
• 81 Simonicca 2016, 513.

29Nevertheless, if on the one the hand processes such as (mass) tourism can ‘denature’ the cultural (and religious) life of a community, on the other hand they may paradoxically help strengthening its cultural boundaries.80 As Alessandro Simonicca notes about the context of Bali, the boundaries that tourism tends to cross “sono via via ridefiniti da nuove barriere delimitanti una sfera ‘sacrale’ non commercializzabile”; he further adds that “il turismo tende a ricompattare le vecchie identità”.81

• 82 Simonicca 2016, 513.

30The key distinction becomes that between insiders, i.e. natives, ‘producers’ and at the same time beneficiaries of the event, and outsiders, beneficiaries only: ultimately, between ‘we’ and ‘they’.82 In this regard, it should be noted that, along with a growing number of outsiders, there are still several insiders. First, the aforementioned Archconfraternity is the same body that has been running the religious festival since 1543. Furthermore, several other public (the mayor and other institutional figures, as well as firemen, police, carabinieri) and private (rowing clubs) actors play a distinctive role in it, especially in the part of the procession staged on the Tiber. Finally, the ritual is certainly still ‘lived’ and ‘experienced’ by the few Trasteverini still living in the quarter and by the many who have moved elsewhere. Especially for the latter ones it is the opportunity to come back to their old rione, maybe meeting relatives and old friends, and connecting with their past. Both the individual and collective memory of the procession still play an important part in how the ritual is remembered, perceived, experienced, and narrated in comparison to the past.

• 83 For another example of reshaping of a cult and some of its symbolic elements ‘in the making’ (resem (...)
• 84 Cf. for another example Russo 2020, esp. part III.
• 85 In 2019, on the occasion of the last celebration before the Covid-19 pandemic, the boat carrying th (...)
• 86 Pesce 2017, 11.

31Anyhow, outsiders cannot be considered as totally ‘outside’: actually, not only do they ‘live’ and ‘experience’ the procession in their turn and in different ways, but their attendance cannot help but influencing and reshaping the meaning and significance of the ritual itself.83 This is especially true if we consider that, apart from those ‘from the outside’, i.e. tourists and affluent new residents, some others are at the same time insiders and outsiders. First, the majority of the Romans who were not born in Trastevere or do not have particular family connections with it: the procession and the Festa de Noantri are felt by them as a celebration of ‘Romanness’ as a whole (e.g. the singing of the typical Roman stornelli and songs, typical food, etc.), but at the same time as still especially linked with Trastevere (again: de Noantri = ‘of us others’), thus not especially related with their quarter of birth, work or residence. Moreover, as often happens for rituals deeply connected with a place marked out by a strong identity and a long story of ‘otherness’, many resident foreigners take part in it, even if they are not Christians, because they feel the festival as significant per se and for the rione and as a vector of social inclusion.84 Finally, some confraternities of migrants,85 such as the Hermandad del Señor de Los Milagros of the Peruvian community of Rome,86 also take part in the procession and pay tribute to the Madonna of Mount Carmel, at the same time as ‘the’ Madonna, a familiar figure already present in their churches and prayers, but also ‘a’ Madonna, the local one, the protector of the particular place that hosts them.

• 87 Cf. Woolf 2015, 222.

33The first case study, the ritual movement performed by the Salians, is a striking example of this process, which can be considered in a longue durée framework. As one of the most ancient Roman rituals with precise and unique features (the ancilia, the Carmen Saliare, the dances performed by young patricians, etc.), it was able to (re)shape (the Regia) and create (the mansiones) ‘places’ deeply linked to the ritual performance. Even in the case of the building of a new architectural complex of outmost importance and with multifaceted meanings as the Forum of Augustus, Salian rituals, already part of Rome’s ‘sacred landscape’, could not be left out: a new place with a strong link to Mars, to religious and political rituals and events, and a veritable ‘memory theater’ for the Roman élite,87 had to be ‘Salian’ as well.

• 88 Ferri 2015, 127-128.
• 89 Lizzi Testa 2015, 416.

34Such a long process, the re-enacting of the ritual through the centuries, the creation of peculiar Salian ‘places’, as well as the cultural (emotion, identity, memory) responses to it were bound to leave a deep trace in Romans’ minds and consciousness for a long time, even after the disappearance of the ‘lived’ performance and its actors. This is exactly what can be observed on the occasion of the aforementioned visit of Constantius II to Rome in 357 CE. The emperor had never come to Rome before, and certainly did not know the city well; moreover, though formally still pontifex maximus, he was a devout Christian.88 He was thus definitely and in different regards what we have considered as an outsider. On the other hand the insiders, the Roman natives, those who still celebrated some of the ancient rituals (e.g. the Vestals were still active at that time as well as the pontiffs), and still remembered and felt as a significant part of Rome’s ‘sacred landscape’ some of the rituals that were no longer celebrated, such as Salian ones, cared to restore and offer to the emperor the most ‘traditional’ and ‘Roman’ image of Rome they possibly could. This is why they chose to restore the Salian ‘places’ par excellence: the mansiones “neglected for a way too long time”. It was a matter of a past still felt as ‘present’, because of the role it still played in Roman collective identity, and during the emperor’s visit in particular; a past that could actually still influence the present and its meaning. As Rita Lizzi Testa has recently stated, “to preserve the traditional facies of the city meant to show respect for one’s own past. The magnificence of the monuments indicated the greatness of one’s present”.⁸⁹

• 90 In contemporary terminology such kind of immaterial ‘places’, practices and knowledge have been def (...)

36At any rate we can assume that, like the mansiones, the veritable Salian ‘places’, the Madonna Fiumarola’s ‘places’, created, lived, experienced, and remembered through the centuries, will be restored, visited, celebrated, and remembered for a long time. Even if the procession itself were no longer to be celebrated, it would not disappear from Rome’s ‘sacred landscape’. Quite the contrary: it would endure as a veritable ‘place (of memory)’90 of Rome and Trastevere, and as a ‘present’ part of the identity of both for many years to come.