Faces on the facades of Bologna, Italy

Bologna, Italy's porticoes serve as a dynamic canvas for facial expressions that encode power, memory, devotion, resistance, and consumerist desire. The study reveals how these faces, found across institutional and vernacular contexts, create a distinctive urban semiotics through their spatial density and typological distribution. Unlike numerical censuses, this qualitative analysis leverages fieldwork and semiotic methods to demonstrate the fluid negotiation of meaning between urban centers and peripheries. Walking itself emerges as a hermeneutic practice, embodying the city's visual ecology. This research positions Bologna as a paradigmatic model for studying facial semiotics in European cities.

Bellentani, F. (2026). Faces on the facades of Bologna, Italy. Faces and the City, 61–76. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003464662-7