I remember standing on a scaffold in a crumbling Palazzo near Palermo, scraping at a layer of “historical” terracotta that felt more like plastic than earth. The contractor insisted it was a premium reproduction, but the way it flaked—brittle, lifeless,…
I was crouched in the damp shadows of a basement in Rome last autumn, my flashlight beam dancing over a particularly stubborn patch of travertine, when it hit me. Most people look at the grand facades of the Renaissance and…
I remember standing in the dust of a collapsed courtyard in 1994, my hands stained with the grit of pulverized limestone, watching a supervisor argue about the “aesthetic grandeur” of a facade while ignoring the fact that the foundation was…
I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling courtyard in Noto last spring, my fingers tracing a jagged fracture in a limestone corbel, when I realized how much we get wrong. Most guidebooks treat sicilian baroque after the earthquake…
I was kneeling on a cold floor in a crumbling palazzo near Ravenna last autumn, my flashlight tracing the uneven edges of a floor that most people would simply call “old.” To a tourist, it’s just a speckled surface, but…
I was standing in the shadow of a sixteenth-century bastion in Puglia last summer, tracing a jagged line of lime mortar with my thumb, when I realized how much we misinterpret the history of defense. Most guidebooks will give you…
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 crouched in the damp shadow of a medieval stone arch near Ravenna last autumn, my fingers tracing the uneven grit of a lime-mortar joint that had been weeping for decades. Most people walk over a crossing and see…
I was standing in a damp cellar in Ravenna last autumn, watching a contractor try to explain why a modern, synthetic resin sealant was “superior” to traditional methods. It was a lie, of course—a costly, plastic-wrapped band-aid that ignores the…
I remember standing on a muddy ridge in the Marches, staring at a series of excavated post-holes that refused to align with the textbook diagrams I’d spent years memorizing in university. The academics will tell you that military camps and…