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Rome, the Eternal City, the city of a thousand jeweled churches. Each church a treasure trove of glistening gold and baroque drapery cascading over its roof and walls. Each street a channel to and from some unexpected street side treasure: A Roman coffin turned public fountain, a marble column turned city wall, or a dark alley where the sound of water drips eternally. Rome is the city of reinvention with each subsequent structure built on the physical and symbolic history of Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern era.
Physicist Isaac Newton once proclaimed that: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Rome, too, can remind herself that: If I stand more powerful and majestic, it is not thanks to current accomplishment but to the bedrock of history that accumulates treasures through time and value through age. Rome, too, stands “on the shoulders of giants:” The Roman Empire gave Rome her aqueducts and temples, the Renaissance gave Rome her churches, and the hand of Mussolini gave Rome her fascist monuments and boulevards sliced through the urban core.
Despite being grounded in history, Rome is very much a city of the present. The human fabric of this city may have left the urban core with waves of gentrification and tourism, but the spirit of a living and breathing city endures. North African immigrants peddle their umbrellas and selfie-sticks in the shadows of the Coliseum. Mass with the Pope continues in Saint Peter’s beneath Michelangelo’s majestic dome. Tourists may come and go. Time may pass. The Eternal City will endure and evolve.
When I returned home, I painted a map of Rome from memory (seen above). When I gaze at this map, framed in my room, I am reminded of the generations of historians who passed before me. I wonder in what way will I contribute to understanding the built environment. Rome still appears in my dreams, where I walk through Rome on the cobblestone paths that guide me forward. When I awake, I have a mental image of where I traveled.
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Chiesa del Gesù
Capitoline Hill
Via Nazionale
Roma License Plate
Watercolors
Imaginary
Trastevere
Roman columns abut the Church of San Nicola in Carcere.
Via Julia
Villa Doria Pamphilj
Victor Emmanuel Monument
Via Nazionale
Grafitti: A Roman Tradition
Trastevere
Fellini and Pièta
Hustler for Spagetti Restaurant
Selling Cooking Utensils
Marketplace
Trastevere
Trajan’s Column
The Maltese Keyhole: A View Toward Saint Peter’s
Saint Peter’s Basilica
Tiber Island
Tiber by Dusk
Pope Francis Memorabilia
Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere
Ministero dell’Istruzione Pubblica
Ostia Antica
Pons Fabricius
Male Caryatid
Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere
City of Angles
Trastevere
Via Vittorio Emmanuele
Pantheon Panoramic
Pantheon
Arch of Constantine
Quirinal Guardhouse
Chiesa del Gesù
Villa Borghese
Villa Borghese
Villa Borghese
Castel Sant’Angelo
Outside the Pantheon (Photo credits to Maia Zhang)
Capitoline Hill
Baths of Caracalla
Baths of Caracalla
Baths of Ostia Antica
Via Julia
Via Appia
Via Appia (With Mom & Dad)
Via Appia with Medieval Fortress
Via Appia
Trastevere
Art meets Industry
The Forum by Night
The Forum by Day
The Forum of Caesar
The World of Piranesi
Roman Water
Ostia Antica
Cat Sanctuary of the Piazza Argentina
Mussolini Meets Peroni
Roadside Monument to Motorcycle Death
Italian reads: “And the beast who does not gather…”
Saint Peter’s Basilica
Saint Peter’s Basilica
Cobblestones Commemorating Jews Deported to Auschwitz
SPQR
SPQR
