Roma — Kwame Granderson Photography

The Colosseum at mid-morning, swallows in the sky above

No. 01 · Chapter I · Italia

The Arches at Noon

The Colosseum · Roma

Late morning. The swallows own the air above the Forum until the cypresses are warm enough to climb. I stood across the via and waited for them to circle through the frame — and for about four seconds, they obliged me. — Photographer's Note

"While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand;
when falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall;
and when Rome falls — the world."

— Lord Byron · Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

7 Jul 2019 · 11:56 · Canon EOS 5D Mark IV · EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II · 28mm · f/5 · 1/400s · ISO 200

Piazza del Colosseo · Roma 41.8902° N · 12.4922° E

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The Pantheon at first light, the inscription visible above the columns

No. 02 · Chapter I · Italia

M · AGRIPPA · FECIT

The Pantheon · Roma · before sunrise

Six-twenty in the morning. The square is empty — every Roman still asleep — but the inscription has been awake for two thousand years, telling the same gentle lie. (Agrippa did not build the one you are looking at. Hadrian did, around AD 126, and modestly kept the older name above the door.) — Photographer's Note

"Angelic, and not of human design."

— Michelangelo Buonarroti · on the Pantheon

9 Jul 2019 · 06:20 · Canon EOS 5D Mark IV · EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II · 25mm · f/5 · 1/100s · ISO 16,000

Piazza della Rotonda · Roma 41.8986° N · 12.4769° E

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