And here they are, finally, the Pillars of Eratosthenes in Gibraltar. All of a sudden, there they are! Solid, right, justified, authoritative, undisputed, definitive, theoretical, geometric. It was, according to Sergio Frau, the mathematician and astronomer from Cyrenaica to have moved the Columns as far away as the Strait of Gibraltar. Impeccable conclusion of myth and ritual—the verbal one—measured only in words without the use of a compass which Alexander the Great replaced with a map whose precision was entrusted to the steps—as many as the breadth of his empire—of the Bematists, the Macedonian leader's odometer men. The geopolitics of power put the fate of places in the hands of new technology: physical space and its representation were no longer the prerogatives of past tradition but of future wars. So, from the Strait of Sicily that spoke Phoenician, Western gates migrated to the Atlantic to form a perfect counterpoint to that other channel, the Bosphorus, the Hellespont, theater of Trojan myths in which city walls were as vast as the agony of the hero's corpse. Hector no longer looked to nearby Achilles but to the increasingly distant Heracles; and the Mediterranean changed shape over the very short time in which the new boundaries of the world were traced in Alexandria.
Postcard #166. [above] A reconfiguration of the great economic and political centres of Europe, a new metropolis straddling two worlds, no different from the other except for size and quality. Electric light, symbol of 20th-century modernity, ensures the correct density in the project; at night, the city's visual noise creates more sharply-defined boundaries and transforms the symbol of a shift in the keystone of permanence of cultures in a perennial state of "approaching." Planes take off continually and ships dock in what clearly is the New Alexandria.
![Top: Fernanda Ahumada de Toledo, Mexico D.F, <i>Light*.</i><br />Above: Giorgio De Vecchi, Venice, <i>Strait of Gibraltar.</i> Top: Fernanda Ahumada de Toledo, Mexico D.F, <i>Light*.</i><br />Above: Giorgio De Vecchi, Venice, <i>Strait of Gibraltar.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_3879_Foto%20112%20fronte-retro_UPD.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
Above: Giorgio De Vecchi, Venice, Strait of Gibraltar.
![Sara Angelini, Paride Piccinini, <i>Fraglie Infrastructure #3.</i> Sara Angelini, Paride Piccinini, <i>Fraglie Infrastructure #3.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_8557_Foto%20104%20fronte-retro_UPD.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
Hector no longer looked to nearby Achilles but to the increasingly distant Heracles; and the Mediterranean changed shape over the very short time in which the new boundaries of the world were traced in Alexandria.
![Vulmaro Zoffi, <i>Ouroboros.</i> Vulmaro Zoffi, <i>Ouroboros.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_2588_Foto%2057%20fronte-retro_UPD.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![Nikos Smyriis, Athens, <i>a rainbow is made of water and sunlight.</i> Nikos Smyriis, Athens, <i>a rainbow is made of water and sunlight.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_8247_Foto%2015%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![esterni, Milan, <i>Gibraltar-Ceuta.</i> esterni, Milan, <i>Gibraltar-Ceuta.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_4037_Foto%20111%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![Orhan Ayyüce, Los Angeles, <i>Innerstructural Bridge.</i> Orhan Ayyüce, Los Angeles, <i>Innerstructural Bridge.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_9680_Foto%2047%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![Gianfranco Setzu, <i>The Bridge of Breaths.</i> Gianfranco Setzu, <i>The Bridge of Breaths.</i>](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_9949_Foto%2051%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![Federica Doglio, Edoardo Riva, Turin. Federica Doglio, Edoardo Riva, Turin.](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_2191_Foto%2040%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)
![Shun Yao Luo, China. Shun Yao Luo, China.](/content/dam/domusweb/en/architecture/2011/09/12/project-heracles-6/big_358053_2517_Foto%20144%20fronte-retro_UPD1.jpg.foto.rmedium.jpg)