Classics and Civic Identity at the Old Poznan City Hall
The reception of Classical antiquity has become quite a hot topic in recent years. It helps that there are lots of examples of the use and appropriation of Classical themes and motifs in modern art and architecture that can be studied through this approach. The field of reception studies has also increasingly been accepted as part of Classics ‘proper’. I have a lot of sympathy for this interest in Classical reception, although I occasionally feel that it contributes more to a communal sense of nostalgia (i.e. longing for a time when the public still appreciated the ‘true’ value of Classics, and Latin was taught as the first foreign language in schools, etc.) rather than ‘enlivening’ the subject and rendering it relevant in the present. It is perhaps because of this that I often find that the most interesting examples of the use (and occasional abuse) of Classics are those that you come across (almost) at random and in contexts where you hadn’t expected them.
I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the extremely interesting decorative programme of the Old City Hall in Poznan when I visited this summer. Across the facade of its loggia runs a series of portrait roundels of various Classical authors, scientists, politicians, a Byzantine emperor and even a rebel slave. Read on at www.iconoclasm.dk