I was standing in a damp basement in Ravenna last Tuesday, watching a contractor try to force a modern, Portland cement-based grout into a sixteenth-century masonry gap. It was painful to watch. There is this pervasive, expensive myth in our…
I was standing in a damp basement in Turin last November, my flashlight catching the jagged edge of a limestone block, when I realized how much we get wrong about the piedmont and baroque legacy. Most guidebooks will drone on…
I remember standing on a scaffolding in a narrow alley in Palermo last autumn, squinting through the dust at a set of sixteenth-century window guards. Most people see them as mere decoration or a barrier, but as I brushed away…
I was kneeling on a damp limestone floor in a small, deconsecrated chapel outside Ravenna last autumn, my flashlight tracing the hairline fractures where a heavy dome met its supporting piers. Most architectural guides will tell you that centralised plan…
I remember sitting on a crumbling limestone ledge near Vernazza, my knees stained with dust, watching a local farmer inspect a hairline fracture in a retaining wall. While the tourists were busy snapping wide-angle selfies of the colorful villages, I…
I remember standing in the courtyard of the Castelvecchio last autumn, my fingers tracing the grit of a sixteenth-century lime mortar that was slowly weeping under the weight of a modern steel intervention. Most critics will spend hours prattling on…
I was kneeling in the dust of a site near Ostia last summer, my knees aching against the grit, when I saw it: a section of wall where the Roman brickwork transitioned into a crude, hurried patch of lime mortar….
I was standing in the shadow of the Tempietto last Tuesday, squinting against the Roman sun, when I realized how much we get wrong. Most textbooks treat bramante and the high renaissance as if they were discussing a collection of…
I was standing on a rickety scaffold in a damp crypt near Siena last autumn, my nose inches away from a fractured lancet window, when I realized most people completely miss the point of stained glass in italian churches. They…
I was standing in the Querini Stampalia last Tuesday, my flashlight tracing the edge of a brass inlay, when I realized how much people misinterpret him. Most architectural critics treat the relationship between Carlo Scarpa and detail as if it…