Not too long ago, I opened to the first page of an Italian magazine, Bell’Italia, and I read the following editorial note: Alcune città sono un palinsesto di storie stratificate nei secoli. Some cities are a palimpsest of histories stratified over the centuries.

Palimpsest, if you are like me, required an additional translation effort. It refers to something that has a new layer, aspect, or appearance that builds on its past and allows us to see or perceive parts of this past. Here in Rome, I’ve heard this more commonly described as a “layer cake”. A beautiful or sometimes obvious union of parts brought together from different times.  It is recognizable in places like Teatro di Marcello.

It is both through utility and a sense of reasonable preservation that we humans join vestiges of the past with the necessities of the present. This is why it was not too baffling to see apartments built atop the Teatro di Marcello—the city’s lifeblood is its centuries-long tradition of building things meant to endure. I think that’s why I get bemused commentary from Italians when they note that in America, so much is constructed from wood.

I did not grow up in a town of stone-carved wonders much like those dotting the Penisola italiana. Instead, I grew up on a far skinnier and weather-battered peninsula that sticks out onto the Atlantic Ocean. From an early age I was aware that various bits of our coastline were under perpetual threat from the ocean. When one hurricane came, a Falmouth Heights restaurant known as “Casino by the Sea” became redubbed “Casino in the Sea”.

After I was well into high school, my father (by way of his Woods Hole-born mother) introduced me to a book called The Outermost House by Henry Beston. Published in 1928, it was penned by a naturalist who documented his experience living for one season in a tiny house out on Nauset Spit— a bold initiative considering the battering that the east-facing coastline takes once the pleasant summer weather fades away. 

The book’s namesake, the house, was ultimately consumed by the wash and wind of the ocean. Even its location has now been reclaimed by the sea. On the whole, the bulk of the structures built on Cape Cod simply do not enjoy endurance of what we see in Italy. But there are some fingerprints of the bel paese not far from where Beston’s house once stood. Traces that were already there before his house was put up—and the evidence still remains to this day…if only just. 

Ten miles north of the Nauset spit and along the National Seashore, there’s a scrub pine-overrun spot of noteworthy significance. Here is a place that the tourists know best as Marconi Beach. A few weeks back, we decided to pile into the car and travel to see it. Since this was the offseason, it would not be so daunting to drive the length of Cape Cod in order to learn a bit about Marconi Wireless Station. 

Over a hundred years ago in 1903, an Italian named Guglielmo Marconi brought his brain and capacity for expanding communication capabilities to Cape Cod. After establishing two-way communications between Europe and the North American continent just a month earlier in Glace Bay, Canada, he sought to repeat the performance in the United States. 

The story tells of an original construction of antennas that needed to be rebuilt. The battering that the antennas took required the construction of four great wooden towers. Once atmospheric conditions were optimal, here on Cape Cod Marconi succeeded in sending and receiving signals (sent in Morse code) between King Edward VII and President Theodore Roosevelt. Along with the transmissions in Canada, the breakthrough would mark a turning point in how we communicate over large distances.

Almost exactly 118 years later, you’d be underwhelmed at how the site look today. It would be charitable to call it a fossil of itself—this is because the lower Cape’s elements have left only a few bricks still mortared together into an oblong box. It looks like it was forgotten in the sand. Next to it there’s a chain wrapped around what might be confused for a hefty piece of driftwood. For a station credited with picking up ship’s distress signals (to include assisting the RMS Titanic and dispatching the Carpathia to rescue survivors), it’s a bit incredible to think that this is all that remains. You see far more exquisite (an older) remnants of ancient Roman handiwork scattered across the European and North African continents.

I think about the traces of the past that have endured by somehow co-habiting with our modern structures. They are all extremely valuable in helping us gain a visceral feel for history. And then I think about the uncountable places around the world where the terrain has been shaken clean like an Etch-A-Sketch. Unforgiving canvases such as those found on the eastern face of Massachusetts are only one example. Indeed, to this day the National Seashore is a protected space. You will not see any sort of layer cake construction piled on Marconi’s old communications station. You also won’t find a Casino by the Sea (and if there once was, it is now very much in the sea). Call me biased, but I think this is a good thing.

I had actually never been to the National Seashore before our impromptu trip to Marconi Station. As a native Cape Codder, I know the lack of exposure sounds crazy (our Mashpee school trip sent us mucking through a salt marsh, while the Falmouth kids went up to the National Seashore). Now as adults wrapped up in gloves and warm hats, the three of us stood in the freezing temperatures, of course being whipped by the wind, and we looked over the edge of the steep dune. 

In my mind’s eye, I imagined the people at the turn of the 20^th century who first constructed the towers. They performed their entire operation at this exact same time of year, too. Which I think is kind of nuts. I think about its years of use where locals from four miles away had to endure a loud spark each time the antennas operated. I think about how Marconi must have felt upon successfully making his transatlantic transmissions. Anyone with any knowledge at all of the Marconi name knows that he is responsible for far more than this derelict pile of bricks and wood—but as for me, I took a certain delight in learning about it.

Back in Italy, Marconi is just one of many notable creators from this country’s history. Indeed, after our visit, I sent Italian friends a photo of the modest sign posted by the seaside. The overwhelming response was, “Oh yes, first radio transmission”. I shook my head and felt amazed that I never knew about this before.  Even though it was practically in my backyard.

I’ve kind of forgotten why I started telling this story- and I’m not exactly sure how it all pulls together. Maybe I only went to visit because I now live in Italy, and such flashes of Italian-American interaction have a newfound significance. It is no secret that I’ve always loved where I am from—and jealously prize the winter months for its stark cold and quiet beauty. Everything of course will eventually erode away, but I do believe that there is something to be said for recognition and imagination. Taking time to consider both the things we can still see, as well as maintain some regard for what has slipped away—it’s time well spent. 

Postscript:

I also learned that in sending these transmissions, it costed an eye-popping 50 cents a word. Just now I received a text from my brother back on Cape Cod providing me with a weather update. I responded in an instant with a weather report from Italy. Now 118 years later, and there are indeed ways to visualize how far that station has come.