Roma moment

A Roma sepultada en sus ruinas

To Rome Buried in Its Ruins

Buscas en Roma a Roma oh peregrino! y en Roma misma a Roma no la hallas: cadáver son las que ostentó murallas y tumba de sí proprio el Aventino. Yace donde reinaba el Palatino y limadas del tiempo, las medallas más se muestran destrozo a las batallas de las edades que Blasón Latino. Sólo el Tibre quedó, cuya corriente, si ciudad la regó, ya sepultura la llora con funesto son doliente. Oh Roma en tu grandeza, en tu hermosura, huyó lo que era firme y solamente lo fugitivo permanece y dura!

You seek Rome in Rome, o pilgrim! and in Rome itself you do not find Rome: the proud walls are a corpse and the Aventine Hill is its own tomb. Where the Palatine once held sway it now lies full length and, honed by time, medals show themselves to the battle of the ages more as damage than as the Latin Escutcheon. Only the Tiber remained, and its stream, if once it irrigated Rome as a city, now weeps for it as a supulchre, with a grim and grieving sound. Oh Rome, in your grandeur and beauty, that which was solid vanishes, and all that endures and lasts is the fleeting moment.

Quoted from baroque writer Francisco de Quevedo

The Windy City

In Chicago you feel the pressure of infinite surrounding plains; it's a city that fills the land; even the lake, enclosing one side, allow no escape. From time to time, at the end of a long ride by tramway, train, or elevated railroad, the buildings thin out, and it seems that the city is finally going to expire. Then it springs up again, even more vigorously; you've merely reached an old border, with new neighbourhoods built beyond. And beyond that there's is yet another belt, and another farther on. But it's not only these exorbitant dimensions that give Chicago its density. Los Angeles is vast but porous. This town is made of a thick dough, without leavening. More than any city in the world, it reeks of humanity, and this is what makes its atmosphere so stilfing and tragic. Neither nature nor the past can penetrate it, but in the absence of the picturesque, it possesses a dark poetry.
-Simone De Beauvoir, America Day by Day

Look Closer

"People rush through Athens on their way to the islands," he said, "and take in nothing but the Acropolis." Antonis recited the words of a shepherd he'd encountered while lost in the mountains: "A foreigner and a blind man are the same. They don't see what in front of them." And it's true - Athens has gotten a bad rap among travellers, for its traffic jams, overcrowded tourist sites, and seasonal air pollution. But there is another side to Athens, and those who focus only on the city's glorious past, Antonis says, are missing its seductive present: its sensual dry heat and sea light; its blue sky and bright flowers; the icy drinks, garlicky dips, and tangy cheeses served in cafes; the splashes of green and, everywhere, a citrusy smell; the startling hills that jut up heroically in the centre of town.
-Alan Brown, "Athens, Look Closer"

Palermo, Italy

I suppose Palermo, the great bay of Palermo with its lofty promontories thrust out into the sea, so noble in outline and in mass, Monte Pellegrino on the west, and Monte Alfano on the east, the city set as it were in a natural amphitheatre between them on the shore of the blue jewel-like sea, its palaces and turrets and minarets seen against the dark background of far flung mountains, and surrounded by the riches of all wales, the Conca d'Oro, running up in an ever narrowing valley into the great bare hills, with its olive gardens, its orange and lemon groves, its fig trees and almonds, its palms and agraves and its infinite flowers: I suppose Palermo is one of the loveliest places in the world.
-Edward Hutton, Cities of Sicily (1926)

Trees in Sydney

Sydney is so beautiful. The sparkling blue of the ageless harbour is framed by the verdant foliage of aged angophoras, she-oaks and Moreton Bay figs. On the other hand, they're blocking the view of the harbour and the houses overlooking it. This leads to outbreaks of midnight pruning. "Nature is amazing. It took this Moreton a century to grow. Pass the chainsaw. It'll take it a century to grow back. Imagine the price of this place then!" Jean Kittson is an Australian performer, writer and comedian in theatre and print, on radio and television. Quoted from Sydney Magazine (The Sydney Morning Herald)