Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

I WAS sitting not long ago at the southern extremity of the Palatine hill, where the remains of the palace of Septimius Severus tower a hundred and sixty feet above the level of the modern streets, and I was trying to fathom the abyss which lay open at my feet, and to reconstruct in imagination the former aspect of the place.

— from The destruction of ancient Rome