Beautiful sunny day in Rome. Our hosts have a stunning old apartment 5 mins from the Coliseum with 5m ceilings and a 40m2 terrace. At least we are living with Romans even if we are tourists. Our first day included visits of the Forum and the Coliseum, and as I was walking through them I was wondering why they were ruins. After all, these monuments were in one of the biggest and richest cities in the world. You would expect that if something was destroyed by an event (fire, invasion, earthquake) the city government would not just leave it to decay but would rebuild either a similar or newer building on the same site (as happened in NY after the Twin Towers were destroyed). Thanks to some quick research by Theo (involving a smartphone and Google) it seems that the main reason is economic. After losing its empire (somewhere between 500 and 900 AD) Rome's population went from 250,000 (which was huge at the time) down to 120,000. That meant that the Roman government no longer had the funds to maintain its non essential buildings and slowly let them fall into disrepair and ruin.
I was wondering if there could be any equivalent phenomenon in our times (for any future web historians I am writing this in 2018 AD). And I guess the best parallel would be what happened to Detroit. In the 1950s Detroit was the capital of the Automotive Empire, over the next 50 years it lost its place to barbarian hordes (Japanese and German mainly). This led to a population decline from 1.5 million to 750,000 which has meant that whole areas of the city and its suburbs have fallen into disuse and ruin.
I'm not convinced that Detroit's boarded up house will attract as many tourists as the Coliseum does, but who knows...
Lunch (restaurant):
- Bruschetta
- Spaghetti a la putenesca
- Gelato banana cinamon e pera
- Vino bianco
Dinner (home made):
- Crostatina di spinaci
- Linguine al pesto
- Straccetti di manzo
- Fior di lato gelato
- San pelegrino
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