FIVE GREAT ARCHITECTS ...YOU'VE NEVER HEARD Of

摘要

The proposition that cities are free museums is self-evidently true. Truistic, even. The streets, towers, offices, monuments, fountains, spires, alleys, bridges, parks, boulevards, palaces, churches, apartments, exchanges, barracks and so on, are the exhibits in the most engrossing shows on earth. A gallery without a roof. Even the official museums are part of these de facto museums. It's all happenstantial, of course. Cities were not founded as museums, but as sites of commerce, industry, worship, belligerence and so on. They are, however, institutionalised and exploited as museums. This process reduces a city to a collection of sites. Or, rather, parallel and competing collections. Thus: imperial Rome, renaissance Rome, baroque Rome, fascist Rome (for specialists only). These are the Romes we are likely to be apprised of, which have staked their place in history, which we tick off in our guide books, which we visit because they are sanctioned, commended. We are letting ourself down, depriving ourself, failing in our autodidacticism and in our duties as cultural sheep if we neglect to visit the Coliseum or Piazza Navona. Just as we would be were we to overlook the great masterpieces of painting in a closed gallery.