
The Shape of Rome (2013) - throwaway8184
https://www.exurbe.com/?p=2219
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fosk
Visiting Rome is one of the most beautiful experiences you can do, it's a time
machine back into the past, it's walking through history.

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apaprocki
Tangentially related since the article describes the underlying Temple of
Mithras -- the newly reconstructed London Mithraeum opens free to the public
(tickets required) on Nov 14. Check it out if you're in London!

[https://www.londonmithraeum.com](https://www.londonmithraeum.com)

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dang
Previously discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8679210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8679210)

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DrScump

      The new Mayor... announced his intention to destroy one of the city’s central roads, the Via dei Fori Imperiali,
    

... which didn't exist before Mussolini anyway. This is a _restorative_ act,
not a destructive one.

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Sniffnoy
...did you actually read the article? You're not disagreeing with it.

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mrgordon
yes true, but I think he is disagreeing with the word choice as it makes it
seem like the Mayor was doing a bad thing. It would be more neutral to say he
restored it or even removed it but destroyed has a negative connotation.

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gaoshan
This article is so well written! Absolutely delightful to read.

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rhaps0dy
Ex Urbe's writing is generally pretty great. Do check out her series on
Machiavelli, the inventor of Consequentalism:
[https://www.exurbe.com/?p=1429](https://www.exurbe.com/?p=1429) .

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gerikson
This is a great post.

I love Rome but I don't feel it's one of the more grueling cities to visit. I
guess if you have to fit in _everything_ in a couple of days it can be. We had
three, we skipped the Forum and the Vatican Museum but did visit the Galleria
Colonna.

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riffraff
3 days does not seem nearly enough to visit Rome, I'm curious, what did you
see exactly?

I'd consider 3 days a reasonable time to visit Budapest, Vienna and Barcelona,
for comparison.

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205guy
I love history and this article presented the history of Rome in a captivating
way. I really like how the author described the layers going down, but then
tied all the stories together through time back to the present, including the
current issue. I also like how the settlement patterns and succession of
religions can explain the current layout of the city.

I know Paris better than Rome, and it is similar, just not as many layers
deep. From the castle walls under the Louvre [1] down to the curved walls in
downstairs bathrooms (a little restaurant near Notre Dame, likely just an old
cellar, and probably only 400 years old, not 2000). And before you dismiss the
history as happening only in Europe and only centuries ago, San Francisco once
moved its cemeteries along the old main road out of town (Colma along El
Camino Real) and Seattle already has a second layer [2]. History repeats
itself, or rather humans are the same, with the same habits and patterns (like
that other thread about a one star review on a Sumerian clay tablet [3]).

Another interesting story about Rome: because of all the layers of history,
and the richness of Ancient Rome, artifacts have been unearthed for years.
Imagine living in the 1500's or 1600's and hearing about a great statue that
was unearthed, and much finer than most anything existing at the time. This
was the case of Laocoön and his Sons (1506) [4] and the Dying Gaul (early
1600's) [5]--their rediscovery is part of our history. Of course, Roman
statues are still unearthed all over the old Roman Empire to this day. In an
odd twist, so much time has passed that old collections of Roman art have been
lost again and then recovered recently [6].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_castle#The_remnants_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_castle#The_remnants_of_the_medieval_Louvre)

[2]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laocoön_and_His_Sons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laocoön_and_His_Sons)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Gaul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Gaul)

[6]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11285...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11285587/Ancient-
Roman-statues-emerge-from-British-ambassadors-garden-in-Rome.html)

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csmark
For our 10th wedding anniversary this past summer we went to Rome and a few
other parts of Italy. Our tour guide took us through the Basilica of San
Clemente so it was a treat to read this article. This was on our second day of
our trip and realizing just how much history is in the city is a paradigm
shift from being a 3rd generation immigrant from the states.

What really stuck with me was: "...a slab with a Roman pagan funerary
inscription on one side which was re-used and has an early Christian
inscription on the other side, in much cruder lettering."

It's about 3 inches thick, 15 inches tall and 3-4 feet long. It is mounted so
it can be easily rotated. On one side the letters are chiseled out to
perfection. The spacing is perfect, all the edges crisp and the angle of the
cuts identical. The flip side looks like a 6 year old with a dull crayon
scrawled out the letters on a blank sheet. The first letters are jammed
together and then continue to get farther apart to the right and the next line
does the same. This side was carved more than 200 years after the flip side.

Civilizations rise and fall and with them knowledge and skills are lost and
rediscovered.

When we first entered the church our guide pointed to the uneven floor and
later the 2 row of columns are not symmetrical. One sits a few feet farther
from the wall than the other side. The reason is the arrangement of the
supporting walls underneath. I forget the exact reason the floor is uneven
other than something with the archways underneath. The author notes this and
how the columns themselves are not identical and were looted from different
sources.

The St. Peter's Baldachin is a lot of bronze. Although not confirmed the
source may have been the Pantheon which was stripped of it's brass in 1625.
The 16 pillars or pronaos of the Pantheon are 60 tons each. They were quarried
in egypt ~110AD. Every building has a story behind it.

Visiting Rome:

My wife wanted the tour guide, I was less than excited about the whole idea.
My wife was right and I openly admit I was totally wrong. I'm into history and
my wife is into art and we're both Catholic so having a tour guide who knew
where to go and could tie what we were seeing with our interests, walk us
through the history of the city, and point out the idiosyncrasies like the
author in this article all combined and added dimension and depth to the
experience that was priceless.

If this article is what turns your crank I'd suggest a tour guide.

My wife and I are not the typical tourists as our 3 different tour guides all
noted. We didn't take pictures because postcards, shopping was limited to
Venezia save holy medals and other items to be blessed, we were filling in our
knowledge Roman and Church history with details few would be interested in,
and there were parts we'd ask to skip to spend more time in areas of interest
to us. For example, we skipped parts of the Vatican Museum to focus on others
and didn't need a tour guide inside St. Peter's Basilica so we extended our
time in the Vatican Museum.

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brianwchan
This was a great read - thank you for sharing.

