201artistic memorials (sculptures) – need not necessarily assume
such a monumental appearance. For a structure to function
as a monument, its design features must contain a special se-
mantic > capacity. This capacity for taking up and emanating
meaning rests mainly on qualities of design Prägnanz that are
heightened further by a surrounding, creating a sense of dis-
tance. Bearing pronounced semantic capacity are historically
meaningful forms that have lost their contents and now offer
themselves to be charged with new meanings (> type). The
overwhelming and sublime impact of monuments often de-
rives from the dignity conferred by age, and from their prov-
enance from a world that we no longer understand, and can
hardly explain verbally. In their archaic power and historical
distance, they often seem enigmatic and foreign, and yet all
the more laden with meaning.
But monuments also derive great significance from their
urbanistic function within a spatial structural fabric. Here,
too, their memorial character, their representative function,
and their design Prägnanz play decisive roles. With reference
to monuments, we orient ourselves spatially not only within a
town, but also in relation to its historical and social structure.
Aldo Rossi has referred to architectural monuments as the
‘primary elements’ of a town, as they are ‘constitutive compo-
nents’, which form the ‘actual structure of a town’ by virtue
of their collective and public character and their relatedness
to a specific site (1966/1982). Monuments are set off as strik-
ing objects, buildings, staircase structures, or > public squares
from the uniform developmental texture of the town as a ho-
mogeneous ground, giving it an unmistakable character as a
scaffolding of key points. When they are situated at strate-
gically important positions, for example as entryways to a
town, at topographically striking places, or as the poles and
arrival points of > axes, a characteristic network of spatial
relationships emerges between them, not unlike the one that
Sixtus V had laid out in Rome. On the one hand, this ur-
banistic scaffolding is readable as traces of past urban de-