Category: Modern Italy

I remember standing in a narrow alleyway in the heart of the city after the 2009 tremor, my fingers tracing the jagged edge of a limestone lintel that had been sliced clean by the movement. Everyone around me was talking…

I was standing in a narrow alley in Amatrice last spring, my fingers tracing the jagged edge of a broken lintel, when I realized that most of the talk around earthquake reconstruction debates is nothing more than expensive noise. Politicians…

I was standing in a narrow alleyway in a small Sicilian village last autumn, my hands dusty from examining a crumbling limestone lintel, when the silence hit me. It wasn’t the peaceful silence of a midday siesta, but the heavy,…

I was kneeling in the dust of a narrow side street in Trastevere last Tuesday, my magnifying glass inches away from a crumbling travertine threshold, when a tour group of forty people surged past. They weren’t looking at the delicate…

I was standing in a derelict courtyard in Palermo last Tuesday, watching a team of contractors prep a site for what the local news was calling a “revolutionary” urban regeneration project. They were talking about seamless integration and synergistic spaces,…

I was standing in a crumbling courtyard in the outskirts of Naples last Tuesday, watching a contractor try to patch a structural fissure with nothing but cheap, grey cement and a prayer. It’s the same way politicians approach the concept…

I was surveying a small, nineteenth-century farmhouse near Ravenna last Tuesday when I saw it: a jagged, ugly seam where a new housing development had simply slapped itself against the ancient boundary wall. There was no transition, no respect for…

I was surveying a mid-century renovation in Ravenna last Tuesday when I found myself staring, not at the beautiful frescoes, but at the junction where a new drywall partition met an old stone lintel. It was a mess of cheap…

I remember standing in a damp cellar in a crumbling palazzo near Palermo last autumn, my flashlight catching the jagged edge of a sixteenth-century limestone block. A developer was there, waving a glossy brochure and talking about “seamless integration” and…

I was standing in a decommissioned textile mill outside of Biella last autumn, watching a developer walk through the main hall with a stack of glossy renderings. He was talking about “minimalist aesthetics” and “stripping back the soul” to make…