Category: Roman

I was standing in a dusty courtyard in Syracuse last July, my neck aching from staring upward at a crumbling limestone facade, when I realized most people walk right past the most honest part of a building. They look at…

I remember standing on a scaffolding in Palermo last autumn, watching a modern tower crane attempt to hoist a delicate, hand-carved limestone lintel that had been salvaged from a collapsed portico. The sheer, mechanical indifference of the machine felt almost…

I was standing in a damp basement in Palermo last autumn, tracing the jagged line where a 17th-century limestone block met a modern concrete patch, when it hit me: we spend far too much time obsessing over digital blueprints and…

I remember kneeling in the damp chill of a basement in Ravenna three years ago, my flashlight beam cutting through a layer of silt that hadn’t been disturbed in decades. I wasn’t looking at the grand frescoes upstairs; I was…

I was kneeling in a damp basement in Palermo last autumn, my flashlight cutting through a decade of silt, when I saw it: a lead junction from the 19th century, crudely soldered but still holding. Most people look at the…

I spent three hours yesterday squinting at a single stretch of opus reticulatum, trying to figure out why the mortar density shifted so abruptly near a corner joint. Most people visit the Hadrian Villa at Tivoli and see nothing but…

I was kneeling in the damp dirt outside a small estate near Arezzo last autumn, my hands stained with the grey dust of crumbling lime mortar, when I realized how much we get wrong about these places. Most people look…

I was crouched in a damp corner of a villa near Syracuse last autumn, my flashlight catching the edge of a faded fresco that looked, at first glance, like a simple decorative border. But as I leaned in closer—the way…

I was kneeling in a damp villa outside of Syracuse last autumn, my knees aching against the grit, when I realized how much we get wrong about the past. Most people walk through a museum and see roman mosaics and…

I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling portico outside Palermo last autumn, my flashlight tracing the jagged edge of a broken plinth, when it hit me how much we get wrong about history. People walk past these sites…