ABSTRACT
When the significance of “ruins” emerged into human consciousness during the Renaissance, they were considered “objects of knowledge” (Makarius 2004: 7), a link to a lost world and a revelation of a past wisdom. Just as the “ruins” of ancient books were slowly being assembled, translated and interpreted, fragments of buildings were being recorded, catalogued, studied and interpreted, and this gave momentum, and a perceived foundation of truth, to the new ideas. Thus, ruins became exhibits in a museum of architectural history, to be collected, studied and admired as testimonies to the grandeur of things past. They became Monumenta, an admonishment to remember and to perpetuate the sanctity of memory.
