VANDALISM IN ROME.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2760, 22 March 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

VANDALISM IN ROME.

Rome (says the Time* correspondent) is J threatened with one of the most barbarous demolitions which have been either proposed or carried out in the city, and this time it is nnt tho municipality which proposes it, but tho Royal Government, through the Minister of Public Works. It is proposed to cut away tho front of Sangnllo's bastion on the Tiber side of the Castle of St. Angelo, the erstwhile tomb of Hadrian, in order to widen the street, a mutilation which would entirely destroy tho symmetry and picturesque aspect of one of the few medieval structures left in Rome, as the ancient form of the tomb is beyond any restoration, and its present condition is the work of ono of the most celebrated and masterly of tho architects of the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The slicing off of the front of this bastion would destrop altogether its mediaeval character without restoring the antique The modern outworks are of no importance, and their removal would display to advantage tho whole of Saugallo's plan and would give all the roadway needed. The Ministry of Instruction, with its usual zeal for the anoient monuments, lias entered a protest against the mutilation, but as it is a case of one Ministry against another, it is not sure that the bnildinsr can be saved.