Everything in Rome is old and crumbly….and under construction.   The city we live in is having a major boom of building high rises, so we’re familiar with the annoyance of those 20 story cranes and construction fences closing off blocks of sidewalk.   Rome is no different….except they aren’t building new from what I can tell—they are simply restoring the old and crumbly to make it more stable…and keep it looking old and crumbly!   

An awesome concept really, for someone living in a country that is only a few hundred years old, it’s amazing to be able to walk around and see people casually eating lunch among the columns that once held up buildings in 45 AD…

Ed. side note: There is so much old and crumbly stuff in this city, they have too much of it and don’t know what to do with it.  “Oh, this hand-carved column of marble, 2000 years old and previously part of a key piece of a building in the Forum, which after we excavated it was in the pathway of these ruins? Let’s just move and pile it out of the way, over here on the side of the path.”  And then a middle-aged German man can use it as a stool and rest from the heat.  

In America, historic preservation societies freak out over remodeling a 100-year old house. In Rome, a stool.