Sign up to receive updates when articles like this are published. Sign up to receive alerts when articles like this are published. This is a city of memorials. Leaders in time of conflict look out from Greek and Roman temples. Monuments soar up in abstract celebration.
Walls record the names of the fallen.
Marble and granite have a cleansing effect on the experience of war. Courage and sacrifice take on a disembodied air. There is no longer an event, only a statue. Washington is perhaps less used to the transient memorial, occupying time not space. Nor does it deal that often with monuments celebrating the terror and despair that our memories of heroism tend to omit.