Stairway to Accessibility: the History and Symbolism of Stairs
I really should have done all my touristing to Italy 20 years ago. In the past couple of years alone, various popular Italian cities have announced new laws: no big cruise ships docking inside Venice, no eating in the streets of Florence, no swimming in Trevi fountain, and now, ever since a month ago, no sitting on the Spanish Steps.
I don’t blame Italy at all. They’re popular, hugely so. And they’ve been facing an overtouristing problem for a while now, particular in places like Venice. No big cruise ships docking? Not a big loss, especially for people with taste. No swimming in Trevi fountain? No problem, I’m not a teenager anymore. But I have a soft spot for historical staircases. You read that right.
I don’t know what it is, really, but I think it has something to do with how stairs are one of the main fixtures of historical buildings that actually last. It is through the leftovers of these buildings that we glean archaeological understanding of the past, but can also literally walk the paths that historical figures once walked. Yes, I am absolutely the kind of history-fetishizing nerd who stands on a single step for 10 minutes just to really soak in the foot feel of the ancient stone beneath me.
On a more practical level, I also think this new ruling about the Spanish Steps is a bit of a blow to older folks who would still very much like to visit such famous staircases but require more so than others the option of resting on them too.
I’m talking specifically about my parents, who have accompanied me on every major international trip I’ve taken in the past 10 years, and who have endured my need to appreciate foot feel everywhere we have gone. I have pictures of mom and pop sitting cross-legged on the Great Wall, sitting halfway up the rocky steps of Coba, squatting against the Berlin Wall, just waiting for me to finish transporting myself back in time.
But I see the Rome government’s point. If you make concessions for anyone, you’re making concessions for everyone.
We were planning to do another family trip, this time to Italy, some time next summer. I told pop about the new rule for the Spanish Steps, and true enough, he lamented how it was unfair to older people.
That really got me thinking. I mean, I have always wanted to see the Steps, and if my parents say we should skip this one because they’re too tired to climb I might just scream.
It sounds petulant, I know. And I did the self-reflection, trust me, and I think I’ve learnt something from this little blip in world news.
Stairs represent duality and contradiction. As much as they represent passage for able-bodied folk, they represent blockage for other folks. Because of this symbolic significance, artists have incorporated stairs into our culture of aesthetics.
Staircases have always been prevalent in human society, being first conceptualized within nature itself. I’m not really talking about wooden, rustic-looking stairs, or even steps carved into the faces of cliffs or stone. I’m talking about nature making her own stairs.
It is easy to see how stairs are a highly intuitive design, being drawn from the formations of the natural world and the inherent ability of human beings to climb. As such, they are one of the oldest building fixtures made by humans.
Perhaps if you were not such a stair aficionado before, these pictures may at the very least, convince you why I am.
I believe that the sheer grandeur of these structures speaks to something primitive in all of us — the upward draw of the eye is an age-old technique used to invoke feelings of smallness in the observer, feelings that one is about to embark on some kind of endeavor or journey, and feelings of connectivity with something higher.
These are principles that are central to Gothic architecture, which I wrote about extensively in my previous blog, and which was all about using human structures to create heavens on earth. Incidentally, ancient temples were trying to achieve very similar goals to that of Gothic architecture, and temples were by far the ancient world’s go-to excuse for the building of stairs.
Even the language surrounding stairs and how we talk about stairs is exceedingly symbolic — ascent, descent, climb, step, levels — these are all words associated with journey, progress, and growth, and not just in terms of the physical act, but also in terms of the emotional and spiritual connotations of journeying.
The status of stairs as culturally, artistically, symbolically, and historically significant structures and artifacts in human society is not overstated —the fact that stairs as a structure can take on significant meaning is the driving force behind the presence and importance of stairs in art:
Of Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation, writer Aldous Huxley says:
There hangs in the Louvre a Méditation du Philosophe, whose symbolical subject-matter is nothing more or less than the human mind, with its teeming darknesses, its moments of intellectual and visionary illuminations, its mysterious staircases winding downwards and upwards into the unknown.
Aside from the symbolic potency of stairs as a marker of enlightenment, staircases are also often used within religious contexts (see Jacob’s Ladder), to indicate grandness (see The Staircase of the Opera), and to indicate a mysticism of sorts (see The Golden Stairs, where the women’s ritualistic procession downward invokes questions of intent that will never be answered.)
All of this paints stairs as a markedly more positive symbol, largely due to its associations with philosophy, but stairs are actually also quite the indicator of challenge and obstruction, confusion, and aimlessness.
I think of my parents, and how essentially every staircase to them, is a Penrose staircase.
Created by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger Penrose, for who knows what reason, the Penrose staircase is a visualization of a cycle of hardship. Of their creation, the Penroses explained:
…each part of the structure is acceptable as representing a flight of steps but the connexions are such that the picture, as a whole, is inconsistent: the steps continually descend in a clockwise direction.
And who can forget the work of the eclectic M. C. Escher, whose pioneering work with impossible objects helped elevate stairs to another level of cultural and artistic relevance. Though his works were all still, I managed to find an animation of his infamous Relativity, which I think showcases the frustrating and confounding reality of this piece much more:
For many people, stairs must surely seem like impossible objects, despite our perception of them as being relatively straightforward. Indeed, our day-to-day, mundane interactions with stairs could not possibly clue us in to their colourful and decorated position as an artistic symbol.
Moving forward to today’s architectural scene: modern approaches to stair design seem to lean more heavily on minimalist principles. Take for instance floating stairs, of which there are many different styles.
The latter of these two styles is a compromise between illusion and utilitarianism, while the former derives its aesthetic purpose purely from the illusion. These staircases show that advances in technology not only enable new styles and possibilities to be undertaken with stairs, and all of architecture and its fixtures, it also proves that society’s sensibilities of what is stylish is also influenced by the development of these technologies.
Perhaps that is why I hold such strong sentiment for staircases of old. With the way the modern world is rapidly advancing, these grand staircases, with all their unnecessary and indulgent magnificence, will become obsolete. They will make way for a new era of aesthetics, as they are already doing, which plays more to modernist and even futurist sensibilities.
Allow me to clarify, I do not dislike modern styles — I think they are indeed pleasing and impressive, but as a historian I am more attuned to the tragedy of something old being lost.
And so, I really should have been able to see things from my parents’ perspective much earlier. If the study of stairs and their symbolism has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is as simple as they seem, and while the Spanish Steps ruling is steeped in good will and common sense, I can’t help but wonder if our world was just simply not made for older folks.
In Canada, where we have a declining and aging population, some industrious creatives may have found a solution. I present to you: the stairs at Robson Square, Vancouver.
I don’t know about you, but it reminds me of an accessible Potemkin Stairs (which is obviously on my highly secret, highly treasured list of the best stairs humanity has to offer).
This gives me hope that with the technology we possess today, stairs will continue to retain their aesthetic significance, all while becoming more accessible than ever before. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps years from now, when accessibility has become the norm, stairs will take on new symbolic meaning, and will lose the connotation of blockage, obstacle, hurdle, and so on.
But for now, visitors to the Spanish Steps will just have to sit somewhere else.
