The Lie Became Truth

Ruins of the Temple of Vespasian, by G.B. Piranesi

Roman Ruins.
In 1778, an attractively arranged "Roman Ruin" was installed in the gardens of Vienna's Schönbrunn palace. I say attractive, but actually it's incredibly ugly. It was meant to evoke a sinking, crumbling ruin of an ancient Roman building (likely to atone for the complete lack of Roman buildings in the Imperial capital, a point which must have fired some anxiety). Instead, it evokes a zoo exhibit in which a lonely creature must be offered a pathetic suggestion of its habitat. It's really quite a poor fake, which includes artificial brickwork (they couldn't get some real bricks in there?), a pile of rubble that has somehow managed to fall on top of the ruin, and an obviously newly-cut tree trunk lying amidst it all, as if somebody were thinking of converting it into a lumber shop. The transparency of the lie would have been obvious in the 18th century; it was merely a gesture. But now, it is amazing to see the seriousness with which visitors approach it, murmur about it, and photograph it. Yet they cannot be blamed: for on the map and signposts provided for navigational purposes, it is simply labelled "Roman Ruin."
(The culmination of the irony is that the Roman Ruin was recently restored, because it had—to quote their informational signage—"fallen into ruin.")

"Are you still enjoying that?"
At restaurants, hardly anyone will confess to the waiter that what they have eaten was bad. Everything is très bon, merci, and off we go. Often this is by design: restaurants that cater to tourists really do not care if you are enjoying it or not; they have no need of regulars. They are not selling food, but the image of food; the appearance of "authenticity" (in France, wicker chairs and frites; in Austria, Wienerschnitzel and Sachertorte). What does it matter, so long as it makes for good photos?

"Handmade Local Souvenirs."
The biggest lies of all are simultaneously the most enticing to visitors. The hand-carved figurines meant to suggest peasant rusticness; the salt shaker shaped like the one at dinner; the scale model of the church you just visited. What does it mean for these to be local? What do they represent? Nothing more than our exotic idea of a place, which slowly becomes the identity that the place itself takes on.

Via Dante Alighieri.
No Italian city is without one. Many add statues and inscriptions of his poetry to their town squares. His blessing is even claimed in Siena's Sala del Risorgimento, casting Dante as the prophet of Italian unification. Of course, these street commemorations are posthumous by several centuries—largely because, in his lifetime, Dante and Italian cities engaged mostly in mutual hatred. His legacy has now been commandeered by a society still quite fluent in the vices that sickened him seven centuries ago, and by cities to which he had no demonstrable connection. But that is hardly relevant.

"Restored to its Natural Condition." 
We have all come to believe that the less humans have left their mark on something, the more natural it is. The word "natural" and its friends have even come to function as bywords for "good"—the natural evolution of the market economy; the organic development of a city; the innate logic of music; an all-natural white pistachio nut. What does it mean for a product of machine agriculture to be called "all-natural," or for a city's growth to be termed "organic"? And how do we square this with the idea that human-made things are "artificial"—the antithesis of the terms listed above? We ought to abandon this distinction altogether; the betterment of systems should not be synonymous with our abdication of involvement in them—a sacrifice made in the name of "the natural." But for now, we still swallow the contradiction: "restored to its natural condition." We only trust it to be natural if it is signposted.

Obelisk.
Adjacent to Schönbrunn's "Roman Ruin" is another water feature (did I mention the Roman Ruin was a water feature?). This one centers on an Egyptian obelisk, raised up on a grotto-like arch of rock with sculptural mouths issuing jets of water. When it was installed in 1777, the Habsburgs claimed that its hieroglyphic inscription program told the history of their dynasty and their empire in Austria. In fact, its hieroglyphics do not tell anything at all, because hieroglyphics weren't deciphered until 1822. Instead, the obelisk (quickly revealing itself not to be Egyptian at all) is decorated with shapes that look like hieroglyphics—or really more like someone's memory of hieroglyphics, as they really have no connection to Egyptian writing other than their pictographic quality. But one has to wonder how many people know this, passing by—and how many people were intended to know. After all, nothing secures a claim to empire like an Egyptian obelisk.