WHO MADE THE APPIAN WAY
Almost nothing of the Appian Way we carry in our heads is ancient. The fragments on the walls, the road dug out and given back, the enclosure, the pines: someone decided all of it, between 1808 and the twentieth century.
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WHERE IT WASN'T, AS IT WASN'T
I got there by motorbike in June 2019, two months after the Notre-Dame fire, and didn't connect the two. It took me seven years.
VILLA D’ESTE — THE OTHER SIDE: FRESCOES, AUTOMATA, MYSTERIES
At the gate of Bomarzo a sphinx asks whether marvels are made by deception or by art. Take her to Villa d'Este: the palace is painted to lie, the fountains play music and birdsong, and the man who designed it all invented inscriptions. Room by room, the other side of the garden.
VILLA D'ESTE — WATER AS A BUILDING MATERIAL
Villa d'Este is not a garden with fountains. It is a hydraulic machine, and a map you can walk, built between six lost conclaves by a man who never got to Rome, and who brought Rome home instead.
Tivoli Day Trip from Rome: Villa d'Este, Hadrian's Villa, and How to Do Both
Two villas three kilometres apart, an emperor and a cardinal, water and ruins. Which one to choose if you have to, the order to do both in, tickets and hours, and the waterfall if you still have an hour.
AS IT WAS — BUT WHEN?
I was sitting under St Mark's Campanile and I knew it dates from 1912. It was no use to me, until Notre-Dame put the right question in front of me.
Bomarzo Monster Park with Kids: A Day Trip from Rome, and the Afternoon in Viterbo
A wood full of stone giants, a crooked house you walk into, an hour and a half with no route to follow. Tickets, the family timetable, the pushchair question, and Viterbo in the afternoon.
CAPRAROLA — THE FRESCOES AS A POLITICAL MANIFESTO
Read in order, the rooms of Caprarola stop being decoration and become an argument: from the Farnese lands to the map of the world, from the cardinal's family history to a room where a whisper crosses the corners.
Villa Farnese at Caprarola: A Day Trip from Rome That Starts at the Bottom of the Hill
A five-sided palace at the top of a straight street, built so that you would arrive on foot. Where to park, what the ticket covers, the gardens' hours, and what to add in the afternoon.
THE CATHEDRAL WITHOUT SHADOWS
I walked into Notre-Dame and found it flat. Then I discovered that the man who designed its light calls himself a sculptor of shadows.
Civita di Bagnoregio Day Trip: When to Go, What to See, and the Walk Nobody Does
A village on a crumbling cliff, a bridge to reach it, a valley of clay all around. Winter or summer, how long to stay, and the walk almost nobody takes.
THE APPIAN WAY — THE ROAD ON TOP OF A VOLCANO
On the Appian Way you ride higher than the fields. It isn't an impression: you are on the back of a lava flow that stopped exactly where the tomb of Caecilia Metella stands.
Day Trip From Rome
Orvieto Day Trip from Rome: What's Worth It, What to Skip
An hour and a quarter by train, a cliff of tufa, a façade built to be seen from twenty kilometres away. What's worth the trip, what to skip, and where to stand.
Architecture
BOMARZO — THE GARDEN THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN ITSELF
Every great sixteenth-century garden answers your questions before you ask them. Bomarzo doesn't. On the wood without an axis, and the grief that built it.
Italy
CIVITA DI BAGNOREGIO — THE INVISIBLE ARCHITECTURE
There is a map of Civita no guidebook shows: everything that fell into the valley. A Latvian-American architect, a Sienese theorist and the engineers in the rock kept the rest standing, without pretending it was whole.
Architecture
SABBIONETA — THE CITY TOO BIG FOR ITS LIFE
The most perfect city I have ever seen, and I would never live there. Sabbioneta, the Ideal City of Urbino, Brasília and Gibellina: why cities live for the where, not the how.
The Slow Letter
The name I didn't steal
I always thought signing this blog "Giulio Romano" was a small imposture — and that sooner or later I'd have to go to Palazzo Te and settle up with the rightful owner of the name. Then I found out there wasn't one.
Italy
PALAZZO TE — RULE AND LICENCE
Mantua, empty in mid-August. The facade of Palazzo Te is brick and plaster pretending to be stone, and in the courtyard the triglyphs are slipping out of the frieze. Giulio Romano spent ten years building an order that fails on cue — and had to leave Rome to be allowed to do it.
The Slow Letter
The steak I can't remember
I went to Siena to verify a book, and spent the day proving it right. What I actually remember is the heat, the wine, a steak I can't place — and the girl walking patiently behind me.
Italy
SIENA — THE CITY THAT NEVER REALLY LOST
Tuscany's second city, they say — as if that were a ranking that mattered. Siena lost the wars, kept the shape, and built an invisible river to stay alive. Walk it and it doesn't feel like a place that lost anything.
The Slow Letter
The climb I didn't do again
Vignola built a road to make the climb compulsory. Four centuries later, two helmets and a lazy Sunday defeated it. On knowing the right way — and taking the easy door anyway.
The Slow Library
THE INVINCIBLE CITY — THE BOOK I STUDIED BADLY
I got a 24 on the exam and understood nothing. Years later I reopened Gottmann and found a question that reads like today: if work is made of pure information, why don’t we scatter it? His answer, from around 1970, reads like a forecast of the return to the office.
Italy
CAPRAROLA — THE PALACE THAT TURNED A WHOLE TOWN INTO A STAGE SET
Some places you visit and forget. Others follow you home. The Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola is the second kind — a fortress turned into a palace, and a whole town rebuilt to serve it.
The Slow Letter
The doors we locked in Todi
An improvised trip, a suite too big, and a night spent locking every door — after writing a piece about thresholds as invitations. On doors that open and doors that defend.