An English friend is staying with us a the moment, so I am in slight tour guide mode - you can look up the places I visit in a proper book for real details and information!
In response to Merisi putting a poem in her blog, I thought you might enjoy the well known one below.
This huge and amazing palace was stripped bare of all its tiles and is now almost all ruins.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
P.B.Shelley
This palace is not in the desert, of course, but in the city but the same idea applies.
This looks like a medieval city from some illustrated manuscript. There are lots of storks' nests here.
Rose bushes and fruit trees now grow in what were reflecting pools.
