If you’ve ever been to Rome, you must agree that the whole city is like a museum. Rome bursts with history at every corner. Each street and ruin, plaza, statue, building, testifies to Rome’s monumental past : echoes of the grandeur of the Roman Empire that shaped our western civilization, relics of the Medieval times, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Neoclassical era are everywhere. Although I am used to seeing “ancient ruins” since I was born in Greece, Rome absolutely dazzled me. Seeing through Rome’s relics the march of humanity through time was absolutely fascinating.
But something else caught my attention. As I was walking through the Vatican Museum, in the Gallery of Tapestries, amidst all the grandeur of the past, my attention shifted to the present: there was this museum guard, who was standing still by a large window. He was in an area secluded and forbidden to the hordes of tourists walking down the corridor. The Baroque tapestries, with their heavy past, embraced him tightly, but his mind seemed fleeing through the open window. He looked like another exhibit in the museum, but this was a living exhibit. As if he was posing for a Vermeer painting, maybe named “The Brooding Guard”.
Click here for more Travel Art Stories and click here if you want to send us a message with a story of yours!
Cheers,
Ersi
Share this post to: