ABSTRACT
Calvino proposes that silence is a kind of speech: both forestalling and foreshadowing words, it unfurls a space for the unspoken and the unspeakable. So he thought about architectural elements as silent storytellers or speakers of silence. The rose symbolized the world of the gods, heralding spring, the rebirth of earth’s fertility. Greece brought roses to Rome, where the souls of the dead received fragrant offerings. Renaissance iconography consecrated the rose to Venus, goddess of beauty. To ensure the goddess’s amorous liaisons remained secret, her son Cupid dedicated this flower to the young god Harpocrates, Egyptian deity of silence. Under the rose passed secret things restricted to architectural spaces: rites, confessions, miracles, intrigues, and illicit love, secure only within their enclosure, changing meaning should they cross the threshold.
