ROME 1960

The Eternal City is a graveyard a museum a vibrant metropolis and a rich Bonus for Olympic visitors. In Historian George M. Trevelyan's evocative words, here are all the centuries of European history a score of civilizations dead an lying in state one beside the other: and in the midst of their eternal MONUMENTS MANKIND STILL SWARMS AND LABORS, TRAVELERS TO NEXT SUMMER'S Olympics will find the mixture stimulating, but also exhausting, for the swarming and laboring set up a fearful clamor in the ancient streets. and the Roman sun in August can be brutal. Many will therefore choose to do their sightseeing at night. Then the air cools, the cacophony settles to a restless murmur and the grand monuments come lo life, bathed in gold and silver light.

It is this Rome that Sports Illustrated asked Dmitri Kessel to record. His Photographs begin with the sun setting beyond St. Peter's and end with the sun rising over the Formum. In the intervening pages is the grandeur that is Rome the nocturnal city, a place of light and darkness marvelously splendid and poetic.