In the silence of Delphi – walking among the ruins of the temple of Apollo, gathering almonds in the gymnasium and measuring with slow steps the width of the theater overlooking the impressive valley that leads to the Aegean - ends my long journey in Hellas, after four stages in as many months in which I tried to visit, in my spare time from university activities, the archaeological sites that preserve the roots of Western civilization.
Traveling in Greece was like returning home passing through cities and places with enchanting names that you feel like you've always known. Knossos, Phaistos, Delos, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Corinth up to the Acropolis, crossing deep inlets, endless olive groves, cotton plantations with snow flowers, lakes of light and sandstones suspended like meteors. Never was a journey more sweet and intense.
Many notes and photographs that I would like to share with my friends and my young students - also using Facebook - accompanying them with the ideas of the lessons, stories and intuitions of Cesare Brandi (one of the greatest Italian art experts and travellers) who wrote "[..] This is not the sanctuary of Athens, but of Western civilisation. A whole glorious era, perhaps the most glorious of our civilisation, culminates, metaphorically, in the Parthenon".
The theatre, the agora, the gymnasium, the sublime sculpture in the round, Tragedy, Philosophy, Democracy and the Olympics, and countless other constituent elements of our civilization had their beginning, with unmatched intensity and beauty, in the land of Homer.
Europe and the West cannot do without Greece, just as each of us cannot do without the deepest memory and conscience. Visiting those ruins is not a journey into the past but a journey to rediscover oneself, to discover that there is much more than Science, Economy and Religion and that progress is not only made by moving forward, but also by looking back trying to rediscover the lost magnificence and harmony.
(from post on personal FB page)