The Making of Rome

Our Week One Wanderings had made us curious about the making of Rome, of how after the Etruscans, and with one eye on the Greeks, the Roman peoples had grown to master the art of administrative governance within a mature urban culture.

And in particular we had wondered how the sculptural beginnings of architecture and art had been so well founded, to provide such a strong basis for the later development and adornment of the renaissance and the baroque.

And above all, how it was all made, who were the artisans and where were they practicing.

And then we stumbled upon Ostiense - ‘East End’ in Latin - caught between the City and the EUR just as London’s East End is caught between the City and Canary Wharf, Ostiense is the abandoned working quarter at the heart of a now depleted Empire.
 
While the makers of Rome have long since departed, the remains of their craft and acumen remain to be seen over and through the hoarded fences that surround their quarters.

And like that found in the long-abandoned quarries of Easter Island, the scale and quality of this peoples’ most developed abilities are seen in the incomplete remnants of their art to be extraordinary in their prowess.

For here in Ostiense are the unfinished reinforcement cages of great columns, broad portals and considerable lintels. 
Here can be found colonnades finished in a new steel patina. Here are the simple artworks from which early pixel sketches would be developed to new 3D maquettes.
Here are the thermoelectric machines that stamped out the final statues and busts in perfect form, both with and without noses.
And here are the models of vast new cities for which all these artistic endeavours would form an integral part.

But time as ever moves on. Now the artwork of Rome’s citizens that adorns the hoardings is less permanent in its expression. Immediacy and change pervade.

And like the East Ends of many a European city, so change will come to Ostiense.

September 2022