Historical and theoretical writings
His extremely rich production of historical and theoretical writings ranges from Baroque Rome to the famous monograph on Francesco Borromini recently republished; from the different seasons of modernity to specific contributions such as the one dedicated to Piero Portaluppi, a central figure of Milanese architecture in the 1920s, whom Portoghesi describes as a "hero of his time [...] a convinced advocate of a liberal modernism, eclectically open to the most daring experiments, but not animated by revolutionary or paling intentions. [Where] the new had to arise by spontaneous natural force from the already been and already loved, from tradition seen as an inextinguishable supply of ideas to be cultivated because it was always capable of flourishing in an unprecedented way'. After all, 'the negation of the past or rather the rigid morphological separation between present and past desired by the Modern Movement was, giving the term negation its Freudian meaning, a typical defence mechanism'.
What legacy?
Paolo Portoghesi, theorist of harmony and counterpoint, proponent in recent years of geoarchitecture capable of linking a critical reading of tradition with the necessary environmental awareness, has taught us to listen to the stories of the past and of our time, abandoning pre-established certainties and ideologies that architecture no longer feels the need for.