Category: Modern Italy

I was standing on a scaffolding in a narrow street in Ravenna last autumn, watching a contractor try to explain to a homeowner why they needed to drill directly through a hand-cut terracotta ridge to secure a mounting bracket. It…

I was in a damp basement in Ravenna last autumn, tracing the edge of a sixteenth-century stone plinth, when a contractor tried to explain to me why we should pump a layer of spray foam against the masonry to “save…

I was standing in a courtyard in Noto last July, watching a young architect try to explain how a high-tech, sensor-driven HVAC system was the “only way” to manage heat. I wanted to laugh. He was looking at a digital…

I was standing in a sun-bleached courtyard near Syracuse last July, watching a contractor try to explain how a layer of high-tech, synthetic thermal insulation was the “future” of eco-friendly design. It felt like a lie. We’ve become so obsessed…

I was standing in a courtyard in Syracuse last spring, watching a technician apply a synthetic resin to a limestone block that had survived two millennia of salt spray, only to be “protected” by a modern chemical coating. It felt…

I was standing in a damp basement in Palermo last autumn, my flashlight tracing the edge of a sixteenth-century limestone plinth, when the site supervisor started grumbling about the “red tape” of heritage protection law. To him, the regulations were…

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…