I ‘CONFINI’ DELLE CITTÀ AFRICANE

English Abstract Version “It’s not the city that makes the African, but it’s the African who makes the city". African cities are poorly studied by historians who did privilege rural African studies. Sub-Saharan cities show both social and spacial dynamics which did certainly precede the European presence. These dynamics explain themselves in urbanization processes not necessarily linked to economic, industrial and social issues. Tradition and modernity co-exist, they are parts of constant modification processes. The numerous communities which gradually contributed to the composition of the Swahili cities along the littorals of Sub-Saharan East Africa gave life to movements of ‘inclusions’ and ‘exclusions’ which were not always identified with those hierarchical categories proper of the colonial acceleration movements. The present short note aims at reflecting on the roles and explanations of the Sub-Saharan cities ‘cultural films’ and of their ‘borders’, with particular focus on Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania. This is a Swahili town, an African town deeply influenced by mercantile and international cultures, as well as by colonial phases. Stone Town’s ‘borders’ are represented by the walls, by the Portuguese fort, by buildings showing Arab and Asiatic influences, and by the sea, the Indian Ocean: all coexisting realities made of numerous ‘films’. Here the ‘solid’ and the ‘fluid’ borders meet themselves in a series of places constantly defined and redefined within identity and space investigations.