Secret Stories on the Silk Road: Symbols, Architectures and Myths Between Italy, the Middle East and China

The current volume represents a journey that takes the reader in different directions. The road it takes is sometimes the caravan trail, others a Roman road from the classical world, which can be taken in both directions, and includes junctions and overlappings of influence between East and West. The first stop takes us from the steppe of the Goths through to the city of Ravenna, focusing on King Theodoric. A man of the steppe, Theodoric was illiterate but wrote in stone through his indecipherable, famous monument, the mausoleum of Ravenna, an architecture of myth that needs to be read in all of its architectonic connections, within its spatial dynamism and geometric symbolism, which reveals echoes of that which we so reductively call 'the Middle East'. The second step begins in Greece and arrives in Italy. The third encompasses an enormous arch, passing from the Roman imperial eagle to the Chinese imperial dragon.