The Pleasure of Ruins

One of the most interesting phenomenons in the history of architecture is the reuse and transformation of ancient ruins. For us, ruins are often attractive. People go out of their way to enjoy the suggestive aura of dilapidated castles and abandoned factories.

Our generally positive attitude towards ruins is a consequence of living in a rich society. In the past, people were more likely to dismantle a ruin for spare building material, like the Iraqi villagers who burnt a great Assyrian bull to render it into quicklime.

Religious buildings are a special case. For early Christians, Roman temples were an abode of demons. One way to deal with them was to build a church on top of the temple, as in the case of the basilica of San Clemente in Rome, built above an ancient mithraeum. Another approach was simply to consecrate the pagan building to a new patron: in this way the Pantheon (also in Rome) became the church of Holy Mary of the Martyrs.

After the end of the ancient religion, pagan temples no longer posed a threat. By the time of the Renaissance, "past ruin'd Latium" became an object of fascination to artists and scholars.


But the era before the Renaissance remains a mystery. In the 10th century, when Rome was a half-abandoned ghost town fought over by dimly chronicled warlords, a group of Greek monks settled down to live in the ruins of the temple of Mars Ultor ("The Avenger"). Why did they choose that spot? Did the God of War mean something to them, or was it just a convenient pile of stones?

Perhaps the ruins spoke to the monks. In the 5th century, Sidonius Apollinaris wrote of seeing "cattle not only lying in the half-ruined porticoes, but grazing beside altars green with weeds," language which suggests he took some pleasure in the view, even as he deplored it. And Paul the Deacon, in the 8th century, wrote "the dwellings were left deserted by their inhabitants, and the dogs alone kept house... You might see the world brought back to its ancient silence; no voice in the field, no whistling shepherds..." Grim stuff, but beautiful words. Around the same time, an anonymous Anglo-saxon writer penned The Ruin, a meditation that begins:

The wallstone is beautiful
      but broken by fate.

The city is shattered
the old work of giants is falling...

Obviously some people were enjoying the sight of the ruins, even if they didn't go to the 18th century extreme of building fake ones. We still did this in the 20th century, of course, for example at the Guildwood in Toronto.


All this is leading up to a picture of my own, of course:

This is the ruin at Chateau-Bas, in Provence. No one knows to what god the temple was dedicated. What we do know is that at some point, probably in the 11th century, somebody built a small Christian chapel adjoining the ruins of the temple, from which the stones were taken. The temple is now a wreck, but its columns still stand, and it must have been even more impressive when the chapel was built. Today the chapel is dedicated to Saint Cézaire, presumably Caesarius of Arles. We have no way of knowing whether this was the case originally, or who built it, or why they chose the spot they did.

The drawing was done in pencil, in the early afternoon, during a bicycle ride from Cadenet to Salon-de-Provence. It was a pleasant idyll, sadly interrupted by an eruption of kindergarten children. As the teacher said to me as they approached, "Your peaceful solitude, it is over."