Then and Now

Italy


In front of the Arch of Constantine beside the Colosseum and from a 19th century photograph by Giacomo Brogi
 
The Forum Romanum looking towards the Capitoline
Standing in front of the bronze statue of Gaius Julius Caesar, installed during the fascist period in the 1930s on Via dei Fori Imperiali just in front of ruins of Foro di Cesareand Trajan's column
The Monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II - the so-called "Wedding Cake"
The Temple of Hercules Victor
The Pantheon
Mausoleum of Augustus as depicted by Etienne Du Pérac in 1575

Hadrian's Monument, now Castel Sant'Angelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti's 1548 design for the Capitoline Hill
1938 relief line-block print of The Ara Pacis Augustae at a time when the enclosure was built at the order of Benito Mussolini in an attempt to make an Ancient Rome theme park. In 2004, it was rebuilt  as shown on the right to much protest.
 
The Spanish Steps at the turn of the century and today
 St. Peter's in the Vatican
Statues of the Caryatids in the Canopus at Hadrian's Villa
Temple of Juno in Metapontum in a copper etching by Berteaux after Jean Louis Desprez in the 1780s
Pompeii
 American ambulances parking by the temples of Neptune and Ceres.
1925 black and white halftone print of the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum

Temple at Segesta in 1890 and today

1896 photogravure of the Tetrarchy statue at the Basilica of St. Mark's in Venice
San Marco's Square in 1860 and now
1927 halftone print of The Leaning Tower of Pisa, the campanile of the Cathedral

Matera

Greece
Behind me (and the Wehrmacht exactly 60 years before) is the Acropolis
In front of the Parthenon and how it appears in reconstructed form in Nashville

Germans raising the German war ensign above the Acropolis on April 27, 1941
 Hadrian's Arch
Sounion, where Aegeus, king of Athens, leapt to his death off the cliff, thus giving his name to the Aegean Sea.

The Funeral Mound at Marathon  
The stele of honour at Marathon

The Lion Gate at Mycenae, replacing the one from which Agamemnon would have departed for the Trojan war, and through which he returned, only to be murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra. From 1897 to now
Schliemann's so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae in 1880 and now
1897 wood engraving of a façade of a Mycenaean Beehive Tomb
The view of the temple of Apollo in Corinth by Williams in 1816 and now 
The Bema (Judgement seat) at Corinth, where Paul was claimed to have been brought before Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus,   (Acts xviii.14), although the idea of an obscure wandering rabbi called Paul being given an hearing from the Roman consul of all Greece, a Roman senator and brother of Seneca is frankly ludicrous.

 The temple of Apollo in Corinth.
1926 photogravure of the walled gates of the Acrocorinth
Construction of the Corinth canal connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth in 1886.
Palamidi Castle overlooking Nafplion from a 1920s photogravure

The Temple of Apollo at Delphi in 1926 and today, overlooking the theatre
The ruins at Nemea, from an 1890 wood engraving
The temple of Hera at Olympia where Charmides saw the statue of Hermes, perhaps the most beautiful statue in the world.


France
Mont St. Michel
 
West portal of Chartres Cathedral

Cour de Marbre at Versailles in 1895 and now
Hitler’s 1940 battlefield excursion was part of a grand tour of defeated France, of which an early morning visit (in the company of Albert Speer and the official Nazi sculptor Arno Breker) to the architectural monuments of Paris was the highlight. Court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann turned Hitler’s excursion into a profitable propaganda set piece. The cover of the first edition (600,000) of his Mit Hitler im Westen shows Hitler posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, while other more deceptive pictures suggest that the warlord was leading from the Front during the French campaign.
   
 Hitler visiting Vimy June 1940, and me in 1997 and 2007.
 
Hitler at Reims Cathedral, 1940
 Hitler at Ypres, still being reconstructed from the First World War
Hitler's painting of the church at Messines during the Great War and its present incarnation

Portugal
The so-called Temple of Diana, Evora
The site where Portuguese President Sidonio Pais read a telegram from King George V celebrating Portuguese participation in the Allied victory in the Great War from the Palace of Belém in Lisbon (just before he was assassinated), in 1918 and today.

Spain
San Pablo church in Valladolid from an 1858 engraving

Gibraltar
The Rock, British forever under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. A Royal Air Force Lockheed Hudson III of No. 233 Squadron RAF leaves its dispersal at Gibraltar for a reconnaissance sortie August 3, 1942.
Belgium
Hitler at Langemark Cemetery during the invasion of Belgium, 1940.
Canadians marching past what's left of the Cloth Hall in Ypres, 1918 and Hitler returning through Ypres, 1940
 
Constructing the Menin Gate
The Lille Gate in Ypres during the Great War and today

The Canadian 'Brooding Soldier' Memorial to those who were affected by this first use of chlorine gas during the Great War located at Vancouver Corner, about a mile south-east of Langemarck on the road towards Zonnebeke in Sint-Juliaan, West-Vlaanderen. Around 2000 Canadians died in this attack. The imposing statue of the Brooding Soldier stands at a cross-roads near the village of St Juliaan. The design of this memorial was deemed the runner-up after the Vimy Ridge monument design was determined the main Canadian memorial.
 Just outside the entrance to Hill 60 is this monument to the Australian 1st Tunnelling Company who took over maintenance of the British mines underneath whilst the Germans were holding it in November 1916. You can clearly see the bullet holes on the memorial plate from the Germans' return engagement in the Second World War, apparently out of a fit of pique.
 Poperinghe in 1917, with Scottish troops in the Grande Place and the re-named Grote Markt today with the Stadhuis in the background.
Talbot House in Poperinge, one of the most evocative sites from the Great War era. It was here that two army chaplains, Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton and Neville Talbot, opened a club for soldiers. Named in honour of Gilbert Talbot, who was killed at Hooge in 1915, it became known as Toc H after the army signal code used in the war. More than half a million soldiers visited the club, which was housed in the mansion of a local hop trader, who had fled the country.
United Kingdom 
Stonehenge
Abbey Road, 1969 and today
 The Houses of Parliament 
 
Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment in 1926 
 St Clement Danes burning during the Blitz on 10 May 1941 and me beside the Bomber Harris statue in front
 Chilham
Worcester cathedral from the former £20 pound note
Carrick-a-Rede bridge on the Antrim Coast from an 1898 print

Belfast City Hall, turn of the century and today


Republic of Ireland
The Custom House in Dublin from an engraving ca. 1840
Cliffs of Moher, turn of the century 

Dominion of Canada 
  Memorial on the holy site of Wolfe's death on the Plains of Abraham in 1890 and today.


United States of America
Mount Rushmore, before the monument and today

China
Victory celebration of the Allies November 28, 1900 over the Chinese after the miraculous "55 Days in Peking" and at the same spot just over a century later during SARS (hence the near-empty site)
During the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident in Lugouqiao outside Peking
The Great Wall from an 1887 set of engravings based on photographs taken by a Soldier of Sir Frederick Bruce's Bodyguard
 
Chiang Kai-shek above the Tian'anmen Rostrum, replaced now for the time being, by Mao


Tibet
The British army entering Lhasa during the 1904 Younghusband Mission with me holding Chinese occupation money, showing how the city has suffered since. 

Vietnam
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum at completion in 1975 
Wreckage of John McCain's plane, Hanoi, October 1967  and today
 Beside the tank that liberated Saigon from American control

Australia
Brisbane from Story Bridge in 1950 and today

In front of Brisbane's City Hall