Video Slide Show celebrating the heavy-metal aestheics of Rome.

I wasn’t aware when I landed in Rome to spend the year living and working there how densely packed and layered the city is with imagery of spirited defiance, the kind found in the late-20th-century aesthetics of heavy-metal. I have always appreciated the emotional liberation of the theatrical expression of rage evident in heavy-metal music, culture, and imagery and I loved being immersed in the visual culture of the Eternal City, from the pagan fable of Rome’s origins—the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus—to the pervasive machismo of nude statuary and gilded, theatrical gore of the baroque style. This is a simple slide show of some of my favorites. With musical accompaniment, of course.