Model of the Forum as it looked at the height of the empire. (Museum of Roman Civilization)

Last October I described a master’s thesis on how to plan for a restoration of the Roman Forum – center of civic life in the capital of the Roman empire. The author, Eric Stalheim, was the first graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture’s preservation program, run by Steven Semes, the author of one of my architectural bibles, The Future of the Past.

So far as I know, however, nobody in Rome itself has seriously proposed rebuilding the Forum. As of now, it has been a very ruined ruin for many centuries. I would put the chance of its restoration well below that of Penn Station, the hope of all who are interested in the classical revival. On the other hand, it seems as if the Parthenon…