Stitching the City: Urban Memory, Invisible Archives and the Fabric of Europe, conférence présentée à la Universidad de Salamanca

Conference by Chantal Ringuet

Jean Monnet Chair, Salamanca University, Spain

March 23, 2026 at 14h

European cities are not only physical environments but also complex archives of cultural memory. Streets, neighbourhoods, languages and monuments carry traces of multiple histories layered over time. While urban theorists have often described the city as a palimpsest, this lecture proposes an additional metaphor: the city as a textile.

Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on reading the city, as well as on broader reflections on urban memory and cultural space (from Italo Calvino’s literary imaginaries of the city to Andreas Huyssen’s work on memory and modernity), this talk explores how cities can be understood as woven structures composed of threads, crossings and tensions. Like textiles, urban spaces are formed through processes of accumulation, erasure and repair. Beneath their visible surfaces lie networks of memories, migrations and cultural transmissions that continue to shape the urban fabric.

Through examples drawn from European urban contexts, the lecture examines how literature, archives and cultural practices help reveal these often invisible layers of the city. Particular attention will be given to alternative forms of mapping and narrative that seek to make previously overlooked histories visible in urban space.

Bringing together literary analysis, urban studies and a textile-based vocabulary of memory and transmission, this presentation suggests that cities, like textiles, are never finished: they are fabrics constantly rewoven as new narratives emerge and forgotten histories return to the surface.