Category: Roman

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 was standing in the heat of a midday sun in Ostia last July, tracing the uneven, salt-eroded edge of a travertine step, when I realized how much we get wrong about history. Most textbooks will try to sell you…

I was kneeling in a muddy trench outside of Via Appia last autumn, my knees soaked through, staring at a fragment of crushed volcanic tuff that most tourists would have stepped over without a second thought. Everyone talks about the…

I was standing in the dust of a site near Segovia last autumn, squinting at a series of weathered stone channels, when it hit me how much we overcomplicate this. People love to talk about the “grandeur” of Roman engineering…

I was standing in the Piazza della Rotonda last Tuesday, watching a tour group shuffle past, and I felt that familiar, sharp irritation. Everyone was staring up at the massive portico, talking about “divine proportions” and “architectural miracles,” as if…

I was standing on a scaffold in a damp corner of a Sicilian nave last autumn, my flashlight tracing the hairline fractures where the masonry meets the drum, when I realized how much we get wrong. Most people—even some of…

I was standing in a damp basement in Ravenna last November, my flashlight beam cutting through decades of dust, when I realized most people treat a ceiling like a mere lid. They see a finished surface, a decorative flourish of…

I was standing in a damp, half-collapsed Romanesque doorway near Ravenna last Tuesday, my fingers tracing the uneven grit of a limestone voussoir, when I realized how much we misinterpret the simplest things. Most textbooks will try to sell you…

I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling site near Ostia last autumn, my knees aching and my camera lens fogging, when I saw it again: that stubborn, defiant refusal of the material to simply give up. Most people…

I was kneeling in the dust of a site near Ostia last autumn, my knees aching against the uneven ground, when I saw it again—that same, frustratingly vague explanation in a textbook about how Roman concrete was made. They always…