The meaning of spatial expressions has attracted growing interest over the past three decades. Ever since the first studies were conducted in the late ’sixties, the semantic modelling of locative adpositions has favoured geometrical concepts such as regions. However, an alternative approach to spatial adpositions emerged at the beginning of the ’eighties, emphasizing the importance of functional concepts. This chapter sketches the historical background to the development of these two perspectives. Relying on formal and typological arguments, it shows that an approach grounded in both function and geometry/regions provides a better account of spatial adpositions in all their richness.