I was standing on a scaffold in a narrow street near Ravenna last autumn, my hands stained with the fine, white dust of lime, when I realized how often we misread a building’s skin. Most people walk past a palazzo…
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 the shadow of the Porta Nuova last autumn, squinting against the Milanese drizzle, when I realized how much people get wrong when they talk about the Pirelli Tower and structure. Most critics treat it like some…
I remember standing in the humid shade of a vaulted corridor in Verona last July, my notebook damp with sweat, watching a group of tourists stumble blindly through a narrow passageway. They were looking up at the grand scale of…
I remember standing on a half-submerged scaffolding near Cannaregio three years ago, the salt spray stinging my eyes and the smell of decaying organic matter thick enough to taste. Everyone around me was talking about the “miracle” of Venice, treating…
I was standing in the rain outside a neo-Palladian estate in the English Midlands last autumn, tracing the line of a pediment that looked far too perfect to be real. Most architectural historians will talk to you about the “grandeur”…
I was kneeling in the damp dirt outside a farmhouse near Merano last autumn, my fingers tracing the edge of a limestone lintel, when it hit me how much we get wrong. Most people visit this region and see a…
I was standing in a damp, dimly lit sacristy outside Palermo last autumn, tracing the edge of a sixteenth-century saint, when I realized how much we misinterpret these walls. Most textbooks treat the fresco technique explained as if it were…
I was standing in a drafty palazzo near Ravenna last autumn, staring at a structural junction that felt more like a heavy-handed argument than a piece of architecture. I kept hearing people drone on about the “ethereal spirit” of mid-century…
I was kneeling in the dust of a nave in Ravenna last autumn, my flashlight tracing the jagged line where a Roman pier had been roughly grafted onto a much later brickwork repair. Most textbooks will give you a sanitized,…
I remember standing on a scaffold in a crumbling palazzo near Syracuse, squinting through the midday glare at a fragment of a frieze. Most people would have just seen a pretty pattern, but I was obsessed with how the tin-glaze…