DENNIS JENDERS
Rome, Italy · 2018
September, supposedly shoulder season. It was brutally hot and we walked it anyway. The Colosseum still doesn’t make sense to me, that people built something so spectacular, and touring the hypogeum, the tunnels under where the floor once was, where they held the gladiators and the animals, shows you everything it took to run the place.
Then the Forum, where great minds met and worshiped and argued, and I couldn’t get my head around it. This was bustling two thousand years ago. It’s still here. I was there. We came to the Pantheon first at night, the neighborhood still awake near midnight, the building closed, so we lay on the steps and looked up at the weight of it, the doors, the columns, and came back the next day to get inside. And somewhere in there, I got excited to go shopping at Trajan’s Market, right up until I arrived and the ruins reminded me I was about two thousand years too late.
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The Eye of the Pantheon
The Pantheon oculus head-on, the coffered dome drawing in around the open circle. Two thousand years on, the original aperture still lets the light and the weather straight in.
Trevi at Night
The Trevi Fountain after dark, Oceanus riding out of the rock with his sea-horses, the Baroque marble lit warm against the night. Rome’s most theatrical fountain, caught when it finally quiets down.
The Dome at Dusk
St Peter’s dome lit at dusk above a bridge over the Tiber, lamps warming along the span. Even the graffiti on the embankment belongs to the real city underneath the postcard.
Agrippa’s Name
The Pantheon portico, the M·AGRIPPA inscription running the frieze above the Corinthian capitals. Letters cut to outlast everyone who would ever read them, and so far they have.
The Arena Wall
The Colosseum’s stacked arches and worn travertine from below, deep blue behind. The scale reads even in a single fragment of the wall.
The Temple of Vesta
The circular Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum, sun flaring off the top edge and greenery pushing up in front. The round shape marks it out among the Forum’s rectilinear ruins, where the sacred flame once burned.
Castor and Pollux
The three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, still carrying a fragment of entablature above the Forum. What is left of the twin gods’ temple, and it is enough to stop you.
The Temple of Saturn
The surviving columns of the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum, sun flaring across the inscribed entablature. One of the Forum’s oldest sacred sites, still holding its line against the sky.
Against the Blue
A carved warrior group crowning a rooftop parapet, white marble hard against deep blue. Rome keeps its drama up high, where most people never look.
