'The view was so marvellous that it enthralled one in mute contemplation. The Eternal City seemed in that instant more like a fantastic vision than a real thing. Under the deep blue sky, like a stream of diamonds flowing from its bed, the Via del Corso stretched across the city, gigantic, indefinite, fantastic; a sea of buildings which in that pale light took on the strangest and most bizarre forms; an undulation of cupolas, a fugue of profiled shapes thrust into the silver shadow emanating from the sky from which the moon also descended, throwing its innocent spell upon those ancient remains of the world on the Tiber. All Rome appeared of marble. Its head plunged into the glimmer of light, but shadows rose from the ground, coiling at its feet. In darkness, the long strand of gas lamps twinkled like ribbons of stars.'
from Jan Maria Plohjar - Julius Zeyre
