The doors we locked in Todi

There's something I always tease my wife about: she has to plant flags on places. She keeps a mental map of Italy, and every place we haven't been yet is a missing flag that sooner or later has to go in the ground. Todi was one of those. One Friday we decided to leave — an improvised trip, no real plan, just to plant the flag.

It was very cold. The B&B where we stayed had given us an enormous suite, and this is the part we still tell each other and laugh about: it was so big it frightened us. Huge windows of old wrought iron, beautiful — and cold, and not remotely reassuring. So we locked ourselves in. Every door in the suite, one by one, locked from the inside, like two children in a house that's too large. Pure autosuggestion, of course. But that night the doors weren't an architectural detail. They were a defence.

I thought about this while I was writing this week's piece, and it made me smile. Because the piece is about exactly that — doors, thresholds, that extra second certain doors ask of you before you enter. I spent pages describing the threshold as an invitation, as a sermon carved in stone, built to make you stop and look. And I'd written it after spending a night in Todi locking every door I could find, frightened of a room that was too big.

Maybe that's the whole meaning of the threshold. It's never just one thing. It's invitation and defence at once, opening and closing, the exact point where you decide whether to let something in or keep it out. The portal of San Fortunato, the next morning, asked me to stop for a second longer. The evening before, the doors of the suite had asked me the exact opposite. Same object, two opposing requests.

The flag, for the record, got planted.

Giulio Romano — The Slow Architect

P.S. This week's piece is on Todi, and on that extra second in front of a door: [Todi].

The next flag, by the way, has already been chosen. But I'll tell you about that another time.