Make Cities Beautiful Again
From Augustus’ marble dream to today’s soulless boxes: a warning and a path forward
“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.”
After he became the first Emperor in 27 BC, Augustus vowed to build a new forum named after himself. The Forum of Augustus was constructed next to the forum his adoptive father, Gaius Julius Caesar, had built during his reign.
Augustus decorated his forum with 100 statues of great men from Roman history. In his own words:
“This has been done so that my fellow citizens may demand that both I, while I live, and my successors, do not fall below the standards set by those great men of old.” — Augustus
Augustus believed that public buildings and government spaces should honor the men of the past. They should be beautiful and commemorative, radiating the glory of history and inspiring future generations to follow in their footsteps.
But did it work?
The Empire of Beauty
With Augustus came the Pax Romana, Rome’s golden age. During this period, architecture and art reached their peak.Massive projects rose across the Empire:
Nero’s Golden Palace
The Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum)
The Forum of Trajan
These are just a few of the most iconic examples. Rome had become breathtaking, and its architectural vision spread throughout the Empire.
Roman beauty flourished and so did the Empire.
It is safe to say that beauty played a powerful role in lifting the morale of citizens and future leaders. Rome, with all its grand monuments, inspired awe in everyone who witnessed it.
The city inspired men to dream big, because a civilization capable of creating such wonder deserved greatness.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Rome was beautiful, but in the end, like us, it chose efficiency over beauty. During the Crisis of the Third Century, Emperor Aurelian made a fateful decision: he fortified the city of Rome.
He built the famous Aurelian Walls. They had no classical elements, just a humble, purely functional barrier built solely for defense.
No decorations. No statues. No extravagant gates. Just a plain wall.
As the Empire declined, so did its art. Statues lost their fine details. They became ugly, sloppy, unrealistic, and minimalist. Coins suffered the same fate, intricate scenes of places, events, and rulers were replaced by crude, abstract portraits.
This trend continued relentlessly. Rome stopped repairing its once magnificent structures, letting them crumble. Construction of extravagant temples and villas halted in favor of simplistic, utilitarian designs.
These were the unmistakable signs of a dying Empire, the slow abandonment of beauty, the fading radiance of greatness.
Ugliness in Modern Times
Every city now looks the same. Classical architecture has been replaced by glass and concrete.
Such buildings do not inspire people they do the opposite.
They demotivate the young. Architecture no longer tells a man what his ancestors legacy was. He feels disconnected from his own land because everywhere he looks he sees the same soulless boxes that dominate the entire globe.
Thus, young people are more depressed. They no longer feel bound to their homeland. They see no reason to defend it or to continue their family line.
When they look at those concrete and glass boxes, they are told that effort doesn’t matter, that they are merely economic units with no past and no future, whose only purpose is to consume and chase fleeting pleasures.
When the world screams this message through its streets, people begin to believe it.
That is why we have violence in the streets. That is why the West is declining. That is why churches are burning in France, the UK, and Germany in record numbers.
Because we no longer care. We have been conditioned to abandon everything and let the barbarians finish the job. Because we no longer believe we are individuals capable of greatness.
How to Make the World Beautiful Again?
The answer is not straightforward. We cannot simply start building in the classical style tomorrow. Architects are arrogant intellectuals who believe they know better, and those who still design classical buildings are ignored the elites are allergic to beauty.
Beauty is expensive. It is not “efficient.” It is too inspiring.
So we cannot begin there. But there is another way.I said that architecture radiates greatness. Therefore the solution is to become great again.
We must learn about the past and its heroes. Only then will we begin to believe in meaning, in something bigger than ourselves.
We will start believing in individual effort and individual greatness. And with that belief, the world will slowly become more beautiful. You will begin to notice little things again, real beauty in nature, in the few old buildings that remain.
And who knows?
One day you might become the rich or influential man who fights for beauty in the world.
In the end, we will win.
In the end, beauty and greatness will prevail.
— Modern Caesar
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I've dreamed about taking 500,000 men, bulldozing the downtown area and rebuilding it in Greco-Roman and Gothic architecture.