View of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Hill, Looking East

Once the center of Western civilization and political power, the Roman Forum had, by the Middle Ages, become a cow pasture, its once grand temples, palaces, and civic buildings quarried for their materials and allowed to fall into decay. Beginning in the Renaissance, a new appreciation arose for the beauty of what remained, and, by the time photography arrived in the mid-19th century, a Romantic cult of ruins made the Forum a mandatory stop on the aristocratic Grand Tour—a picturesque landscape prompting meditation on the passage of time and the fate of man and his achievements. For those fortunate enough to visit, pictures such as this one provided a way of remembering what they had seen (just as photography does for modern travelers), and, for those who could not make the journey themselves, such pictures provided the virtual experience of “armchair travel.”