Copula Hall is a very large, ornate building that symbolizes the arbitrary and irrational nature of borders and the comic yet sinister nature of government bureaucracy. One of the few places in both Besźel and Ul Qoma, it is the only place where the border between the cities can officially be crossed (without committing breach). In order to do so, travelers must have a visa and be checked by staff at the border. In this sense, Copula Hall is no different than many other border crossings that exist in the real world, including border checkpoints inside divided cities and nations such as Berlin and the West Bank. However, what makes the border checkpoint at Copula Hall somewhat unique (and arguably uniquely irrational) is that Besźel and Ul Qoma occupy the same geographic space, such that it would be possible (but illegal) for a citizen to step in and out of each city within moments. The fact that officially crossing the border requires going all the way to the ornate, imposing establishment of Copula Hall thus becomes a symbol of the illogical, inefficient, and arbitrary nature of borders. This is further illustrated by the fact that Copula Hall itself is crosshatched, such that some of its rooms are in Besźel and some in Ul Qoma, meaning that simply walking through the building involves crossing and re-crossing the border between two entirely different worlds. The fact that Copula Hall is the meeting site of the Oversight Committee—a committee formed of half Besź and half Ul Qoman politicians charged with adjudicating matters that concern both cities—makes it a symbol of the strained unity between the two cities.
Copula Hall Quotes in The City & the City
A Besź dweller cannot walk a few paces next door into an alter house without breach.
But pass through Copula Hall and she or he might leave Besźel, and at the end of the hall come back to exactly (corporeally) where they had just been, but in another country, a tourist, a marvelling visitor, to a street that shared the latitude-longitude of their own address, a street they had never visited before, whose architecture they had always unseen, to the Ul Qoman house sitting next to and a whole city away from their own building, unvisible there now they had come through, all the way across the Breach, back home.
“Yorjavic didn’t breach, Borlú. He shot over the border, in Copula Hall. He never breached. Lawyers might have an argument: was the crime committed in Besźel where he pulled the trigger, or Ul Qoma where the bullets hit? Or both? He held out his hands in an elegant who cares? “He never breached. You did. So you are here, now, in the Breach.”
Copula Hall Symbol Timeline in The City & the City
