Lapis

LANDSCAPE IN THE TRAVERTINE SURFACE

Through the Lapis Tiburtinus, the Roman travertine, the ancient Latins created the very face of their cities, remodeled the typical landscapes of the Urbe. On one side the cold stone, the primordial ma- terial, on the other the pencil, the tool through which people’ ideas can take shape becoming a drawing - both symbolized by the word Lapis. Upon closer inspection, the symbolic nature of travertine appears immediately clear: its texture tells us of a story of tor- rents and brooks through its veins, of hills and crev- ices, of mineral islands in a sea of rock, surrounded by strange animals and fossil plants belonging to a distant time. The surface of Travertine is a landscape on its own, at its heart it preserves, albeit in an em- bryonic form, all the elements of the environment in which it was formed and of which it is an integral part. A microcosm in the image of the macrocosm.

A Great Design Destined to Perpetuate over Time

Therefore, it must have seemed natural to the builders of those times, to those first quar- rymen, to use this stone when constructing their cities, their monuments, the design of their urban landscape, in search of their own environ- ment. Thus, the city was formed by borrowing the shape of the streets from the rivers, the houses from the caves and that of the squares from the wide valleys. Finally, when the inhabit- ed areas were abandoned and nature regained possession of the man-made places, travertine returned to its original role as stone, only to be rediscovered and reused in new buildings, in the construction of new cities, in the perspective of new environments; it became part of a grand de- sign destined to perpetuate over time, changing from time to time in the superficial aspect, but never the soul inside.