As every year, we like to commemorate Terminalia with a photo walk in the city. Terminalia is a one day festival of walking, space, place and psychogeography on 23rd Feburary. Terminalia was the festival of Terminus, Roman god of boundaries and landmarks! Events have been run on this day since 2011.

In 2022 the theme was Wisdom, so our Terminalia walks revolved around libraries in Berlin. Libraries are places of exploration, that have always fascinated me. During Terminalia I explored several libraries in Berlin: Pablo Neruda in Friedrichshain, Staatsbibliothek in Potsdamer Platz and Zentral Landesbibliothek in Kreuzberg.

Who was Terminus?

Terminus was one of the really old Roman gods – more of a symbol of the basic patterns of reality – he didn’t have a face, he was literally a stone marker. Terminus was given influence over less physical boundaries too, like that between two months, or between two groups of people. Terminalia was celebrated on the 23rd February – which was the last day of the Roman Year, the boundary between two new years. The Roman Emperor Diocletian started The Great Persecution, several years of destruction, death and persecution of the early Christians and their churches on Feb 23rd 303 as it was thought that Terminus would also govern the termination of Christianity and “set bounds on the progress of Christianity”. It was, instead, Terminus and the other pagan gods that ended instead, with the Emperor Constantine supporting Christianity a decade or so later. Source: Terminalia Festival