01 – Genius loci – Lappin
The Genius loci
From “Introduction”, The Soul of Place, by Linda Lappin. (pp. xi-xiv)
The power of place is a necessarily life enhancing. It can be threatening or devastating,
posing with negative and positive charges that may change valence according to our personal
point of view. Architects, city-planners, garden-designers, interior decorators, and before
them priests, shamans, geomancers have always known that our environment, external or
internal, can be shaped to elicit certain feelings and moods, promote health or sicken us, or
encourage certain behaviour. They have also been aware that in modelling the landscape or
constructing a building they must work with the creative force inherent in the land itself,
known in the ancient classical world as the genius loci, usually translated as the “soul” or
“spirit of place”.
Most people today might define this term as the atmosphere or the ambience of a locality or
as the emotional sensation that it evokes in us. To the ancient Romans, instead, it referred to
an entity residing in a site and energising it. In other words, a guardian spirit with its own
personality, able to interact with human beings. A more modern conception holds that the
genius loci is a composite of climate and landscape together with the cultural markings in a
site left by its current residents and those of long ago, who shaped and cultivated its terrain,
giving rise to multiple cultural forms adapted to that particular habitat. To the ancient
Romans, all this was but an offshoot of the genius loci, whose signature is deposited in
everything existing within its range of action, from bodies of water to houses, social customs,
patterns of speech, artefacts, recipes, and works of art.
In their religious view, every person, place, or thing concrete – like a tree or a stone – or
abstract – like love, war, or theatre – had its genius, an indwelling spark of divine nature
through which that person or thing was created. The genius of an individual (for women, the
juno) appeared at birth and accompanied the person to death. Often represented as a snake –
universal symbol of time, cosmic energy, and renewal – the genius or juno, similar to the
Egyptian Ka, or the Greek daemon, was a sort of spiritual double protecting the health,
wealth, development, and success of the person to whom it belonged. The genius loci is
specifically the genius abiding in a place.
Volcanoes, fields, villages, temples, public baths, and kitchens all at their genii, who
governed and protected the site to which they were attached, determining its atmosphere and
influencing the outcome of all events taking place there. If you wanted to build a house or
temple in a certain spot, it was customary to seek the blessings of its genius loci or find a way
to neutralise any negative influences that might be present there. Similar beliefs in guardian
spirits of place have been recorded in such diverse cultures as Africa, Tibet, Australia, Japan,
Polynesia, and the American Southwest. Today we might say that the genius loci is a form of
intelligence operating within the environment in synergy with human beings.
Writers, poets, and artists, whose job it is to interpret and recreate reality have long been
intrigued by the concept of genius loci and the power of place. Through different artistic
media, they have sought ways to capture the qualities or mood of a location, to find the links
1
01 – Genius loci – Lappin
between landscape and identity, to show how places can shape a personality, history, and even
our fate. At the same time, many literary and artistic movements have tried to illustrate how
the outer environments of human beings mirror their inner ones. Writers and artists know that
whether we are looking outward or inward at our surroundings, they have a lot to reveal to us
about ourselves, our present, past, and future. Consider for a moment a place that you love or
hate, or that you feel emanates a power. How would you describe or define its genius loci? If
the soul of place had a voice, how would it sound, what stories would it tell?
