2nd week in Rome

The most fascinating part of the second week was definitely the walking tour through the forum romanum and the colosseum. In my 9 years of Latin we learned and translated a lot about the roman culture, the people and their wars; and now I am standing in the roman forum and walked through the colosseum. It was grotesque to think that we were walking through the streets and spaces where history was made all those years ago. It might appear that the Roman Forum is in ruins, but from history and Latin books I know the way it looked like, and even if just one or two columns are left of the building, it is enough to reconstruct the picture in my head. So that experience of retracing the steps of past Romans got a whole new dimension.

With that in mind it was very sad for me to see how thousands of tourists are channeled through those spaces. A place that once was the center of public life in Rome, used for triumphal processions and elections, venue for public speeches, criminal trials, gladiatorial matches, and now it is a tourist attraction. Back in the days it was the most celebrated meeting place in the world and today? Well today it is maybe not the most celebrated meeting place in the world, but it definitely is the most celebrated meeting place in history!

It is incredible how Romans were able to build structures that still stand these days; that makes me think, what do people look at in another 2000 years? Are they looking at our buildings that we build now? Or are the buildings and structures we build now long forgotten by then… Maybe it is a good thing that our built environment has changed; maybe it even had to change; I personally think it had to have changed, architecture always has to adapt to peoples lifestyle and our lifestyle clearly has changed toward the Roman time. But when I am seeing all these incredibly carefully designed buildings, structures or spaces I am wondering if we couldn’t incorporate more of that in to today’s architecture.

So that is something I want to get out of this summer, studying the history and trying to incorporate what I learned into my design. At the beginning of the week we went to the Piazza Fornese right across the Ponte Sisto, and I did this little axonometric: