Day 13 - Strawberry and Honey Walnut

Bon Giorno!

In Rome, you see a lot of examples of architecture and aesthetic from all sorts of different periods of time. Medieval things look appropriately grand, ancient things look appropriately old, and new constructions look appropriately garish relative to both in a way that resembles asphalt repairs on the cobblestone streets. Seeing the contrast leaves me wondering about how things got the way they did.

A Note on the Fall of Rome

Maintaining awesome temples and civic buildings takes the money of an empire. There is a reason the streets of America are not lined with marble-covered buildings, as sweet as that would be. There is just no money for it. When Rome started to decay, the signs were obvious. Buildings were no longer maintained and stripped of any decoration that might be repurposed like marble and iron.  As traditions fell away, lost to things like fighting barbarians and finding food, monuments became useless unless they filled one of those needs. The banks of the Tiber would flood and coat constructions in layers of silt so deep that they disappeared until the 20th century.

Eventually, as Rome stabilized as the residence of the Pope, it began to become grander. Projects were started to glorify God. Popes built fountains and moved around relics of Romes past, such as obelisks first stolen from Egypt by the emperors of old. Any relics remaining were slipped into the Vatican's. Collection, or spirited away to the British Museum.

I was serious about the obelisks.

Rome is locked into a game I like to call "Preserve, Reuse, Forget." Anyone who has ever been to a sleepover should be familiar with the game "Marry, Bang, Kill." PRF is like that, except for with giant pieces of history.

Preserve

Preserve, obviously, corresponds to marry. This is the stuff that is still around and kept in what is more or less the same shape as it was when it was used for its original purpose. Many things that are preserved were only discovered recently, which has done a great job of keeping them from being destroyed. 

For example, the Imperial Forum could have been razed and appropriately turned into a shopping mall.

There are a couple reasons for the time and money to be spent on preservation. A big one is that it is a huge tourist attraction. The Colosseum gets visitors upon visitors, all throwing euros around in order to look down at a place where blood had to be drained to keep it from pooling. I would know. I've done it twice on this trip.

However, not everything can be preserved. Rome is a city of over two and a half million people. There is not enough space for every discovery ever made to be roped off, and the money for the ropes certainly is not there. Very few people will pay to take selfies in front of the Temple of Minor Incarnation of That One Guy unless there were an awful lot of dicks on it or something else that was unique and interesting. 

Reuse

Reusing a building is the equivalent of saying that it was fun while it lasted, but you're only good for one thing. In the case of buildings, it is being a building. 

Take the Pantheon, for example. No one really knows what the Pantheon was used for originally. It may have been a temple to all of the gods, or something like that. What people do know is that it is huge, and its dome is the neatest thing since the freestanding arch.

Majestic, huh?

The dome is truely a marvel of Roman engineering. The oculus, that giant hole at the top, was positioned so that every year on April 21st, the day of Rome's founding, the light hits the porch outside of the temple. It's crazy amazing in there, and the Pantheon is in pretty much in it's original shape after it was rebuilt in the second century. When we visited, however, something told me it was not being used for its original purpose.

If only I could put my finger on why...

The Pantheon is now owned by the Catholic Church, and has been for quite some time. If you were so inclined, you can even attend mass there. 

The fate of reuse tends to be reserved for especially cool buildings, with solid construction. These buildings have stood the test of time long enough to be filled with crucifices. While I am all for keeping these buildings around, reusing them tends to make them good for visits once in a while, but not something I would really want to spend a lot of time with.

Forget

One of the things about killing or forgetting is that the thing that is gone does not just disappear like a vampire on Buffy. It can still hang around for a while, unacknowledged and unappreciated. You can see them, but they are nothing more than a curiousity, one of the many sets of columns in a city that has so many it might as well be Enron's budget spreadsheet. 

We passed by what is thought to be the Hadrianeum today. It is not a sure thing. The reason no one is sure is because this is all that is left:

And for every set of columns, there are five that were destroyed by one calamity or another, referenced in a letter at one point but no longer at street level. These are the things that no one can be bothered to actively look for, because what would finding them mean? They are probably lost underneath all of the streets of shops that sell cheap souvineers and overpriced olive oil.

Rome as a Whole

I am really enjoying my time in Rome. I am a very nostalgic person, and Rome appeals to my sense of adventure and love of history. And somehow, the knowledge that those cobblestone streets probably hide more relics of Rome's past? Those make the experience even better than if everything was behind ropes.

Gelato

I have been hiding my gelato experiences within my posts. Somehow, I could not work it in today.

I have started getting multiple flavors on my cones. It makes the experience more varied than getting just one and having to repeat myself.

Coming Up Next Time"

I review Italian cheeses. Or something. I will think of something.

Ciao!