Rome in Stone — Architecture Across Millennia
Five days of verticals, courtyards, and arranged access: photographing twenty-eight centuries of construction with Hugo Marchetti's draughtsman discipline.
The workshop
Rome is the architecture workshop's natural campus: republican columns, baroque theatrics, Fascist-era marble metaphysics, and the ochre residential city that binds them — all within tram distance. Hugo Marchetti photographs buildings the way he once drew them, from the plan outward, and the workshop installs that discipline: perimeter walks before first exposures, verticals kept honest, light tracked across facades by the hour.
Arranged access opens what tourism can't: a Borromini interior at dawn, EUR's marble halls, and a working restoration site where the city repairs itself in scaffolding and lime.
Hugo Marchetti
Turin · Architecture · large format
Hugo apprenticed as a draughtsman and photographs buildings the way he once drew them — from the plan outward. He teaches verticals, patience, and the courtesy of asking permission.
- Arranged access: Borromini at dawn, EUR interiors, a live restoration site
- Shift-lens teaching with loaner glass
- The facade-tracking exercise — light as a schedule
- Twenty-eight centuries inside one tram network
- Wide zoom; tilt-shift if owned (workshop loaners: two 24mm shifts)
- Tripod — permits held for the group where needed
- Polariser for travertine glare
- Comfortable soles rated for cobbles
- Five days' teaching and all arranged access
- Tripod permits for group sites
- Loaner shift lenses in rotation
- Welcome and closing dinners
- Flights and accommodation (Monti and Testaccio lists provided)
- Most meals
- City transport (~€20 in passes)
- Travel insurance (required)
Accommodation
Not included; recommended guesthouses in Monti put the Forum on your pre-breakfast walk.
Meals
First and last dinners included; Rome objects to further interference.
Getting around
Trams, feet, and two pre-dawn taxis for the access mornings.
Centro Storico, Rome, Italy
Open in Google Maps ↗ · Rome city guide → · Photographing Italy →
“The hourly facade exercise sounds dull and is the best single lesson in light I've ever had. By 4 p.m. the building was a different building, and I have the proof in sequence.”
“The restoration site turned architecture photography into documentary — hands, lime, and scaffolding. My best frames of the week weren't of buildings; they were of Rome maintaining itself.”
Questions, answered
Do I need a tilt-shift lens?
No — two loaner 24mm shifts rotate through the group, and honest software correction is taught alongside. Most participants use the loaners for two days and then decide with their own wallets.
How much walking on those cobbles?
Eight to ten kilometres daily at deliberate pace with tram assists. The cobbles are the real terrain: bring soles, not fashion.
5 seats remaining.
Departures are deliberately small and tend to fill from the newsletter. Booking places no charge — we confirm your seat personally, then arrange payment.
The Wedding Craft — Tuscany
A staged full wedding in a Val d'Orcia villa: documentary craft under deadline, from prep rooms to last dance, with the business half-day nobody else teaches.
24–27 September 2026 · 4 days · €1,980 · Mara Voss
Venice in Silver — A Film Week
Winter Venice on black-and-white film: fog, floods, and thirty-six decisions per roll, with darkroom evenings in a working Cannaregio studio.
18–23 January 2027 · 6 days · €1,890 · Mara Voss