Letters Home: Rome, Italy · 21st April · The Birthday of the Eternal City

On the 21st of April, Ella arrived on the Palatine Hill without a plan and discovered that the date mattered considerably more than she had anticipated. The Romans called it the Natalis Romae: the birthday of their city, calculated with solemn precision and celebrated annually for centuries.

This printed letter follows Ella through one extraordinary day in Rome, from the quiet stones of the Palatine Hill to the golden light falling across the Forum as the evening came in. Along the way she traces the founding myth of the city: the she-wolf, the sacred furrow, the twin brothers, and the fratricide that began it all. She follows the story from Iron Age settlement to republic, from republic to an empire that stretched from Scotland to Mesopotamia, and considers what it means to stand on the oldest inhabited ground in one of the most visited cities in the world.

Each letter in the series is printed and sent as a physical piece of correspondence, written in Ella's distinctive voice: curious, warm, and quietly transported by wherever she finds herself. Part of the Letters Home series.

Size: A4 (210mm x 297mm). Printed double-sided on 100gsm heavyweight white paper. Sent flat in a brown cardboard envelope.