The Colosseum stands where a lake used to be. Nero had an artificial pond dug in the gardens of his palace; Vespasian drained it and built an amphitheatre for the public on the site. The gesture was legible to every Roman: a tyrant’s private pleasure ground returned to the city. The name is Nero’s too…
Notre-Dame has been saved twice by the same thing: attention. In the 1820s it was in such poor condition that demolition was discussed, and a novel rescued it. In April 2019 fire took the spire and the roof, and what saved it was that the whole world was watching. The famous chimeras, which almost everyone…
In 1687 the Parthenon was still largely intact, after twenty-one centuries. Then a Venetian mortar shell hit the Ottoman gunpowder store inside it. The explosion blew out the roof, collapsed the cella and destroyed a large part of both colonnades, killing around three hundred people. Everything we call the ruins of the Parthenon dates from…
This dome is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Not “was” — is. After nineteen centuries, nobody has built a bigger one without steel inside it. The Romans managed it by varying the concrete as they went: heavy travertine aggregate at the base, and at the crown, pumice light enough to float…