CHANGING ROME

Hawera Star, Volume L, 23 October 1930, Page 8

CHANGING ROME

OLD LANDMARKS REMOVED

ATTEMPT AT MODERNITY. Slowlv. irreparably, Rome is changing, says the correspondent of the ■‘Observer.” London. He writes: “Those who have not been here lor a yeiu* or two will lintl many lamina i landmarks .gone, many meinoi les dead, [f they see Hadrian’s Forum more completely uncovered, the leinple oi Fortune restored, the Theatre ol Marcellus isolated, and the Tarpeian Rock laid bare from below, they will look in vain for many ail old street, several old churches. and more than one favourite seventeenth-century corner.” And now the Isola Tibertina is to be ■•modernised” The Isola, with its Matilda Tower, hospital, monastery, with its quiet streets and low houses gay witiii pinks /mil wallflowers m humble household pots, is now in the hands of housebreakers. The street called Tor tie bpecchi has lost- the whole ol one side. Seven-teenth-century houses have been pulled down to “isolate” the Tarpeian Rock, and 'to gain a. fuller view of what remains of the Theatre of Macellus also isolated. The picturesque Piazza Montanara, where labourers stood tor niie and the country folk came to sell their produce and buy harness and saddlery, has vanished. Gaping walls, hillocks of debris are all that remains. Visitors cannot help asking wnethei it lias been worth while to demolish so much for tlm sake of isolating a raw classical ruins, and in an attempt at that modernity which Rome’s narrow streets without pavements can never attain. Would it not have been easier to leave old Rome as it was and build a new business quarter on the plain that stretches for miles between St, John’s Gate and the Alban Hills: