The walking city

In the early years of the last century, out of the sight of architects and planners, a new city began to grow within Old Europe – the city of ‘Zonzo’. This was a city in which you could walk around and get lost, and where the first doubts about the promises of the Modern Age began to be harboured. In Italian "andare a Zonzo" means ‘to waste time wandering aimlessly’ or to ‘lose time’. It is used, for example, in phrases such as ‘instead of working s/he “va a zonzo”’. ‘Zonzo’ is the city of flâneurs as described by Walter Benjamin, a time-wasting activity which could be seen under the windows or along the boulevards or passages in Paris at the end of the 20th century and fits perfectly within the context of those streets where artists roamed aimlessly, seeing the act of wandering the city as a form of urban art.