Tag Archives: Rome

Review: “Pollak’s Arm”

Posted on September 25, 2021 by David Brussat

Pollak’s Arm, a historical novel by Hans von Trotha, is not about Pollak’s arm but about the arm his protagonist, art collector Ludwig Pollak, found, which had been missing for centuries from the shoulder of Laocoön (pronounced lay-o-coo-on), the central … Continue reading →

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Preservation in Newport

Posted on August 22, 2018 by David Brussat

Preservationists have a vital but relatively simple job that has been made more difficult, over the years, by preservationists. The purpose of preserving a historic building is to sustain the beauty it brings to its setting. How to do this … Continue reading →

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Rome: Who are those guys?

Posted on August 20, 2018 by David Brussat

Who are those guys? Good question. But first, I must point out that indecipherable notes on a recent lecture force me to leapfrog a topic I’d intended to address today and grab a quicky topic instead. I’ve chosen to simply … Continue reading →

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Chicken, egg, preservation

Posted on April 15, 2018 by David Brussat

Steven Semes is head of the new master’s program in historic preservation in the School of Architecture at Notre Dame, about which I wrote last year in “Preservation at Notre Dame.” Semes writes in the latest issue of Traditional Building … Continue reading →

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Roman Forum, live, at night

Posted on March 23, 2018 by David Brussat

Above is how the Roman Forum might look at night today if it had never degenerated into ruins since the empire, or if it had been reconstructed as it was at the apogee of its ancient fame. The work, by … Continue reading →

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Krier: Ruins and discontents

Posted on March 22, 2018 by David Brussat

Since we are still on our reconstruction roll, here is an excellent essay by Leon Krier, architectural theorist and master planner of Prince Charles’s new town of Poundbury. It was originally intended as an introduction to The Roman Forum: A … Continue reading →

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Rebuild the Roman Forum

Posted on March 17, 2018 by David Brussat

Last October I described a master’s thesis on how to plan for a restoration of the Roman Forum – center of civic life in the capital of the Roman empire. The author, Eric Stalheim, was the first graduate of the … Continue reading →

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Beauty vs. elegance of cities

Posted on November 17, 2017 by David Brussat

My former colleague at the Providence Journal, Froma Harrop, who has a syndicated column and a website called This East Side (about that side of Manhattan; she also lives partly on that side of Providence), recently asked me to contribute … Continue reading →

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N.D. grad’s Rome restoration

Posted on October 20, 2017 by David Brussat

Yesterday’s post, “Preservation at Notre Dame,” introduced readers to the new Master of Science in Historic Preservation at Notre Dame’s School of Architecture. The program’s inaugural graduate, Eric Stalheim, investigated, for his master’s thesis, the restoration of the Roman Forum … Continue reading →

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Own a free villa in Italy

Posted on May 26, 2017 by David Brussat

Truly! Since not everyone is logged in to the roster of programmes gushing from Italy’s bureaucracy, such as it may be, check out this from the website Hyperallergic. Yes, Italy is giving away free castles, villas and other unused historic … Continue reading →

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