I’m bored out of my mind on the flight back to Seattle that’s already been delayed three hours, so here’s a lucky frame I captured of the monument to Cola di Rienzo that’s next to the Campidoglio steps leading up to the Capitoline Museums. x
Speaking of luck, here’s an auspicious toe and a couple of stern statues near the Colosseum. x
There’s a lot of construction and renovation all over Rome. If I had the book with me, I’d make a reference to one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities. But I don’t. x
Decontextualized antiquities carry an eerie affect. As seen in the Palazzo dei Conservatori at the Capitoline Museums. x
People who invite others to visit a major city with them for the first time sometimes think about how to stage the mise-en-scène of that person’s first impressions of a significant landmark. I had that happen to me with the Eiffel Tower years ago and have done that with Beirut’s blue-domed Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque for others as well.
When Christine first visited Rome, her dad made sure they took the Metro directly there for maximal dramatic effect. We decided to do it differently, using the city’s own leading lines as a framing device.
I took a lot of photos here and thought about how I’d replicate this phenomenon in a post. This is what I’ve come up with. x
I took a few photos here, trying to get the composition right, and in every single one of my shots, the dude in the middle is glaring directly at me, like he has no idea he’s sitting under a significant marker of Mussolini’s reign.
These maps of the Roman Empire were placed here on the Via dei Fori Imperiali as a direct allusion to that Fascist dictator’s dream of a new imperium.
It’s weird that they’re still hanging there, but Rome has many layers of competing narratives all over its urban fabric. There are wreaths throughout the city marking anti-fascist history, like this one on the former home of a communist partisan. We also found a non-descript memorial to all victims of fascism just outside of a transit station.
A Spanish woman who couldn’t speak any English was taking photos there too; we tried our best to communicate in broken Italian to each other, helping her figure out the bus system. x