I was standing near the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana last Tuesday, watching a group of tourists snap photos of the arches, looking for that “classic Rome” feeling they expected. They were looking for the warm, crumbling patina of the Trastevere…
I was crouched in a narrow alleyway off Via di Città last Tuesday, my knees aching against the damp cobblestones, when I realized most people walk through this city completely blind. They look up at the sweeping facades of the…
I was standing on a scaffold in a courtyard near Tivoli last autumn, my fingers tracing a particularly deep void in a weathered block, when I realized how much we misinterpret this material. Most people—and certainly most glossy interior design…
I was standing in the Piazza della Cisterna last July, watching a tour group cluster around the base of a stone wall, listening to a guide drone on about the “romantic skyline” of the town. It’s the same old script,…
I was in a small workshop outside Carrara last autumn, the kind of place where the air is more stone dust than oxygen, when I saw a young apprentice trying to “fix” a hairline fracture in a slab using a…
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 courtyard in Syracuse last autumn, tracing the edge of a weathered limestone lintel, when I realized how much we’ve turned the concept of beauty into a mathematical lecture. Most textbooks treat proportion and harmonic…
I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling palazzo in Palermo last autumn, my fingers tracing a series of jagged, hurried repairs in the limestone, when it hit me how much we misinterpret the concept of authority. Most people…
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 courtyard near Mantua last autumn, running my fingers over a weathered travertine lintel, when I realized how much we get wrong about the Renaissance. Most textbooks treat alberti and architectural theory as if they…