The doors of the city have always been particularly meaningful places, representative of the city itself. They were the only points from which it was possible to cross the ancient city walls, from there people went in and out of the city, declared their origins and paid tolls. Nowadays, with boundaries being not so well-defined anymore, doors keep an important meaning, as they are points from which a new urban subject begins, different from all that was possible to find before. It is not by accident that many considerations about the city and territory start exactly from a reasoning on the doors’function, and that many urban transformation projects focus on the possibilities of transformation and renewal of those places identified as the doors of the city.

Anyway, they ceased to be the historical city’s doors to which we were used to think, places from which it was possible to go in and to get out; people leaves the city passing through a door and then comes back crossing it once again, with no need to give those places any role or meaning other than that of threshold.

Nowadays, things are changing: in a time when transit and movement take place in ways and times different from the historic ones, doors take on other meanings: thay aren’t just doors anymore, they represent also spaces, sectors, places. Today, the intention is to allocate to the city’s doors some particularly meaningful roles. I am referring to commercial centres just out of the motorway toll-gates, but also to the sea’s doors, that is to say ports, which are being transformed into places where culture is produced and where events and exhibitions are hosted. Time had fortified the role of some places for the exchange of people and goods, places where people passed by and did not stay long, their role was being not just the city’s inside but even the outside part, reaching towards other places, cultures, experiences; now, those places are more and more absorbed by the city, which concentrates in them some of the functions typical of the inside, let’s say commerce rather than cultural representativeness. In that way, they become an inner part of the city. One of the aspects of the general project for renewal of Piazzale Roma in Venice that I find most interesting is that, in the context of the already started actions, the main goal is to strengthen the role of this sector as one of the city’s doors, imagining plans able to consolidate its role and to favour its efficiency. Piazzale Roma, together with the railway station, is the arrival and departure point from Venice’s city centre: it is not a portion of the city, but a different place that imposes itself by its nature of way through, exchange, arrival of persons and goods. They are places in which the project cannot and must not take on criteria and solutions similar to those of the city’s central areas; the role of spaces, the quality and typology of services, must tend towards an improvement of the exchange’s efficiency, keeping in mind that to be the door of a city like Venice is a difficult but important and glorious task, essential to ensure a good functioning of the whole city.

This seems to be the spirit with which the different projects have been tackled, starting from the new bridge on the Great Channel, up to the ‘people mover’ system and the improvement of connections with the municipal parking. They are all projects showing movement, talking about the ability of a place to connect different points representing its uniqueness. Everyone who gets here must be able to find an easy and immediate communication system to reach the city centre, there is the need for an efficient transport service, an offer of places and functions that is useful to travels and to the organization of a period of work or stay in the city. It is on this subject matter that the urban and the architectural project have to confront, not forgetting that quality, not just functional but also aesthetic, represents an important thing, useful to show hospitality to newcomers and to leave a good memory to those who leave.