The accurate depiction of the spatial proximity of the two monuments on ancient coins, the descriptive name meta and the distinctive, conical form, ensured that, through the middle ages, Renaissance and beyond, the identity of the fountain as the Flavian Meta Sudans was never lost. The eighth-century Einsiedeln Itinerary refers to it by name, as […]

Although it traces its ancestry back to the leader of the Dutch sixteenth – century struggle for independence from Spain, William the Silent, the House of Orange dates its monarchy only from 1813. Willem I (reigned 1813-40) was authoritarian, but his son and grandson, Willem II (reigned 1840-49) and Willem III (reigned 1849-90) were unimpressive, […]

The lagoon and islands offered a wooded retreat set aside from the rest of the fair. Frederick Law Olmsted, who created this seemingly natural landscape out of tidal mud flats, intended it to be the only area of the fair without significant buildings. Surrounded by a lagoon and covered with bushes, flowers, and trees, the […]

The official plan for the rites established the time frame of an extended funeral, one that began with an exhumation on 22 October and ended with entombment on 11 November, and for a lengthy journey between them, from France to Arlington. The funeral was divided into three phases – ‘selection’, the responsibility of the Quartermaster […]

2.8 The Colosseum valley as it appeared from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s, with white outlines marking the locations of the demolished Meta Sudans and Colossal statue base as if Mussolini were seeking to convey not his revival of the grandeur of ancient Rome but his power to destroy that which is old, unsightly or […]