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

City Patterns

Italian Journey - Roma

"In the solitude of the Via Sacra the well-known objects seemed alien and ghost-like. But when I approached the grand ruins of the Colosseum and looked through the gate into the interior, I must frankly confess that a shudder ran through me, and I quickly home.
Any gigantic mass has a peculiar effect on me; it has something about it which is at once fascinating and awe-inspiring. I drew up a summa summarum of my whole stay in Italy, and this roused in my agitated soul a mood I might call heroic-elegiac, for it tried to embody itself in the poetic form of an elegy." Goethe, Italian Journey

Quotes of the Day

"For the first time in human history more than half of the world lives in cities and it's rising". Sustain That, Architecture Review Australia 2005

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls -- the world"
-Lord Byron-

"Florence is beautiful, as I have said before, and must say again and again, most beautiful. The river rushes through the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it is hard to tell, when you see all by the clear sunset, whether those churches, and houses, and windows, and bridges, and people walking, in the water or out of the water, are real walls and windows, and bridges, and people, and churches." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Letter to Mr. Boyd (1847)