https://vimeo.com/256892975

https://www.piranesian.com

This film has been created entirely from still images, many of which have been merged together with the eighteenth century engravings by Giambattista Piranesi. Piranesi has been widely recognized as Italy's most celebrated artist of engravings of views of Rome. This film is an exploration of the changes to the monumental landscape of Rome over a quarter of a millennium - well after the monuments of Rome were already in ruins. It covers a time when this landscape became recognized for its aesthetic and cultural heritage, a recognition that to a significant extent came because of the dissemination Piranesi's work over the rest of Europe during the 18th Century. This helped to stimulate the 'Grand Tour' which then lead to the stopping of the systematic quarrying of the ruins for materials for new buildings.

Making use of the opportunities of the new medium of digital photography, this show has taken this medium into new territory by taking the imagery back in time by merging it with the pre-photographic art of Piranesi and other artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Except for a brief descriptive introduction, the commentary in the film is entirely composed of historic quotations from the history of the Eternal City. The music used in the sound-track is entirely composed by Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, all of which was inspired by the Roman urban landscape.

The digital images were created during a year-long National Endowment for the Arts 'Rome Prize' Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2003. In this version of ROME WAS! Ruins Eternal, most of the scenes that were edited out for the 30 minute version, have been restored. The movie is now 43 minutes in length.