camminando | Re-visiting the Healing Beauty of Ethernal Roman Urban Spaces

Piazza Campo de' Fiori: the statue of Giordano Bruno by Ettore Ferrari (1889) erected where the Dominican friar (also philosopher, mathematician and poet) was burnt at stake. The inscription in the base reads:
A BRUNO - IL SECOLO DA LUI DIVINATO - QUI DOVE IL ROGO ARSE

While landing at the Leonardo da Vinci international airport,  the pilot welcomes the passengers to Rome, announcing the local time and saying, right after, that "time does not matter, since Rome is the ethernal city".
I truly welcome this remark: for me as well Rome is ethernal, the place of my soul and mind where time stands still in the timeless ruins, art and architecture.
   You don't have to visit the countless museums and churches to become aware of the intoxicating beauty of the ethernal city. Walking becomes not only an act of knowing but also an immersion in beauty and memories-for me both personal and collective.
   I am very much in search for beauty as a means for healing: it seems like everything is falling apart in my life brutally attacked by the power of bureaucracy and dysfunctionality experienced worldwide in three different continents and in three different areas of my life.

Views of the river Tevere

Corso Vittorio Emanuele

Places of Memory | Castel Sant'Angelo and Borgo

Rome, was my first axis mundi and during every visit in the past ten years I go through a ritual of revisiting places of my childhood or adolescence, experiencing a deja vu of perceptions, memories and transformed feelings. I realize how my personal history here ---and when I was living here I was totally unaware of it --- was interwoven with historical and architectural places. My childhood and adolescence experiences are connected with all these magical places. If only I could write perhaps I could sell best sellers and screenplays for Hollywood blockbuster movies :-)
This time my ritual was on Castel Sant'Angelo, where I remember riding a trycycle and then several years later with many different experiences. See below how my childhood memories of strolls and tricycle rides happened right in the “angel and demons” places…

An angelic Water Fountain

Photographs and text are excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project
“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture”