Architecture
As a former civil engineering student and the son of an architect, I have developed an appreciation for architecture, especially older architecture. I will try to fill this page with some architectural tidbits I find interesting.
Italy
A couple years ago, I went to Italy and Greece with my Latin class. Unfortunately, I left my camera along with one of my memory cards under the seat of a British Airlines plane, and it was never located.
I loved Rome. Everywhere you go, there are buildings from different periods right there. The center of Rome is thick with buildings ranging from Imperial to Renaissance looking over streets laid down over 2000 years ago. The Forum Romanum is something that anyone visiting the city must see. The interesting thing about the Italians is that, while they do well at preserving architecture, they have had a tendency to “recycle”. You can see how there was a failed attempt to take and “recycle” the columns by pulling them down with chains.
They also, as most people with older cities do, build on top of the older structures. This saves the trouble of clearing the old structure and of building a new foundation. This tendency has endowed many large cities with an impressive underground, and has also preserved the street layouts for millenia. Here is a building on the edge of the Forum Romanum. In the Middle Ages or Renaissance, a building was constructed on top of an ancient edifice. In turn, within the last century, a government building was placed on top of the remains of that building, giving an interesting layer effect.
London
