Old and New

There are ruins of past civilizations all over Europe and Italy is no different.  Old buildings were often added onto, rather than being torn down to make room for another, which seems to be the modus operandi in America.  In this image, the columns to the right are free standing, all that remains of an ancient structure that predates the 11th century Romanesque church in the background.  The bell tower in back is the “newest” part of the church, probably 16th or 17th century.  Sometimes they did remove columns such as these for use as building materials, but here we were lucky they didn’t.

Ciao!