Blog Post
From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, June 13th 2007 at 7:20

ROMAN HOLIDAY

    No time or money for a trip to Rome this summer? Here’s a consolation: a virtual tour of ancient Rome, as it looked around A.D. 300. The site is called “Rome Reborn,” and it’s part of a big project undertaken by the Insitute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia. The four 3-D videos are accompanied by music, including pieces by Vivaldi and Mendelssohn (his “Italian” Symphony). You’ll have to provide your own soundtrack while perusing the stills; what better time to hear Respighi’s Pines of Rome? Actually, you won’t see any trees or people in the renderings, because the focus is on architecture (so why is the interior of the Basilica Maxentius so murky—verisimilitude?). Somehow the images, so barren of life, remind me of certain paintings by Giorgio de Chirco.

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