The Stones of Rome V

Travertine

Back in the distant year two thousand, soon after I had arrived in Rome and aged twenty-two, I was sent on a particularly terrible job by the language school for which I then worked. In those pre-smartphone days, and speaking almost no Italian, twice a week after an eight o’clock lesson at Cinecittà Studios I would take umpteen tedious methods of public transport to the polo industriale of Avezzano in Abruzzo. The last lurching bus would eventually deposit me on a main road, already by October lined with patches of snow, from I would walk through the gates of the pedestrian-unfriendly Texas Instruments compound.

Travertine blocks. Cava del Barco. June 2024

Like much of Texas, I would imagine, the polo industriale of Avezzano was not intended to be visited on public transport. Once there I would be subjected to unpleasantly inept flirting with stalkery overtones from an entirely forgettable grey man in late middle age which would now be considered sexual harassment. Among all of the—mostly male—suits I taught in all sorts of places between 2000 and 2001 he was the only one to behave so abysmally. That the office was in such bleak surroundings only added to the dreariness of this very antithesis of the Italian dream.

Travertine at the “Temple of Vesta” at Tivoli. 4 July, 2024