The network of by-ways from the
Jesuits' church to the Sant' Angelo bridge is ploughed up and opened by
the huge Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Buildings which strangers used to
search for in the shade, guide-book and map in hand, are suddenly
brought into the blaze of light that fills broad streets and sweeps
across great squares. The vast Cancelleria stands out nobly to the sun,
the curved front of the Massimo palace exposes its black colonnade to
sight upon the greatest thoroughfare of the new city, the ancient Arco
de' Cenci exhibits its squalor in unshadowed sunshine, the Portico of
Octavia once more looks upon the river.
He who was born and bred in the Rome of twenty years ago comes back
after a long absence to wander as a stranger in streets he never knew,
among houses unfamiliar to him, amidst a population whose speech sounds
strange in his ears. He roams the city from the Lateran to the Tiber,
from the Tiber to the Vatican, finding himself now and then before some
building once familiar in another aspect, losing himself perpetually in
unprofitable wastes made more monotonous than the sandy desert by the
modern builder's art.
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