I was standing in a drafty, half-renovated palazzo in Palermo last autumn, staring at a structural intervention that was being hailed in the journals as a masterpiece of “innovation.” It was nothing more than a clumsy, expensive attempt to force…
Author: Elena Vasari-Pucci
A building tells you how it was built if you know where to look. I write about joints, mortar and the decisions of people who are long dead, because that is where the real story sits.
I was standing in a sun-bleached square in Lecce last July, watching a group of urban planners argue over the placement of a “modular, interactive seating installation” that looked more like a piece of plastic playground equipment than anything meant…
I remember standing in a damp, half-lit cellar in Ravenna last autumn, tracing the grain of a sixteenth-century timber frame with my fingertips. While the official survey report droned on about “structural integrity” and “material degradation,” I was looking at…
I was kneeling in the damp dust of a basement in Ravenna last autumn, my flashlight beam cutting through decades of grime, when I found it—a faint, rhythmic indentation in a single, sun-baked course of masonry. Most people walk past…
I remember standing in a drafty attic in Ravenna three years ago, the smell of damp chestnut and centuries of dust thick in my throat. I wasn’t looking at the beautiful frescoes downstairs; I was staring at a single, hand-hewn…
I was kneeling in the dust of a site near Ostia last Tuesday, my knees aching against the uneven ground, when I saw it: a single, jagged fracture in a stretch of ancient opus caementicium. Most people walk past these…
I spent three weeks last summer in a dusty archive in Florence, tracing the ink lines of Renaissance masterworks, only to realize how much we get wrong about the concept of perfection. We tend to treat the ideal city drawings…
I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling courtyard near Syracuse last autumn, my fingers tracing the uneven seam where a reused Roman block met a medieval limestone lintel, when I realized how much we get wrong about this…
I remember standing on a crumbling terrace in Santo Stefano di Sessanio last October, my knees aching from the climb, staring at a wall that refused to make sense. Most travel guides will tell you that the beauty of abruzzo…
I was crouched in the dirt outside a crumbling farmhouse near Velletri last autumn, my knees aching against the damp earth, when I realized most people look at the Roman countryside and casali through a lens of pure, romanticized fiction….