Abstract

This essay is a consideration on the concept of limes in architecture and art. Through linguistic, literary and iconographic examples, it looks into the sense and forms of it from Antiquity to the present days, formerly by a semiotic approach. "Limes" could be examined as a border, a boundary, a frontier or a limit, in concrete or figurative sense, but it always has the specific feature of being ambiguous, both sign and space, both object and actor: so, the text reflects on the iconography of "hortus conclusus", the semiotic sense of walls, doors and frames, the conceptual nature of cloisters and arcades, in order to try to give a useful definition of "limes" in the history of material culture and human figurative expression.