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Paolo Verzone (1902-1982) A Journey in Time and Space | Archeology-1: Works

"...Circumstance has allowed me to live for years in the ancient capital of the Byzantine empire, to travel far and wide in Anatolia and to undertake many excavation campaigns in Hierapolis in Phrygia. Thus I became familiar with the monuments of Christian art in ancient Constantinople and Asia Minor, and with those of the classical age, and so I came to be accustomed to the sophisticated forms of those in which, in one form or another, Hellenistic grace is always present." (P. Verzone)

Paolo Verzone never felt the need to describe his journeys; he travelled all over the Anatolian peninsula, Georgia, Syria and the outskirts of Constantinople, transforming his journey into a journey towards knowledge, an instrument for investigating the past, a journey more widely interpreted as directly witnessing "things", the ancient remains transformed by history.

The refined publications of the grand travellers of the 18th and 19th century fed Verzone’s authentic craving for books and led him to assemble, over the years, one of the best Piedmontese collections on the subject. Verzone was well aware that an important journey was one which gave you something more than just newly-gained knowledge. Indeed, in his writings one clearly senses his need to go beyond the learnings of others and to acquire for himself the objective data concerning the matter in question and to be fully discerning about the important results.

Verzone uses the journey as a means to get to know the object of his research directly and, in this way, he makes an important addition to his personal historical-critical method of analysis.

By carefully scrutinizing ancient remains with the critical instruments of comparison, Verzone acquires that particular understanding of the monument that, we might say, borders on reaching "full functionality"; his scientific studies give him the possibility of defining what is "the state of the art" of the current knowledge. However, it is only the direct observations made during his travels, his "pondering about the stones amid the dust" and by estimating the changes brought about by history that one can define that something extra which characterizes Verzone’s critical analyses.
His capacity for observation, stemming from a very lively curiosity together with a fervid and precise "architectonic imagination", make Paolo Verzone the perfect Baconian man who, to paraphrase the English philosopher, uses the eye as the direct channel for studying historical architecture, though always accompanied by a camera, a tape measure and a measuring cane.