Identity Perception in Monuments, Ruins and Remains: Roman and Romano-British Heritage in British Travel Accounts c. 1770-1820

The concepts of identity and heritage are strictly connected, as heritage acts as the material or immaterial memory of a single or collective past, forming a decisive and significant part of the sense of self. Individual and collective understandings of heritage are influenced by cultural archetypes but also shaped by personal experi- ence. Accounts of encounters with heritage sites or objects are, of course, framed by these modes of perception. When considering the cultural reverberation around the built heritage of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century Italy and Britain, it is worth noting that the etymology of the word in late Latin is identĭtas- atis, but when its meaning is derived from the Ancient Greek, it is ταὐτότης, which indicates a set of elements making the uniqueness of a person, allowing him or her to be recognised as such and not to be confused with someone else. The current definition of identity in English is ‘the state of having unique identifying charac- teristics held by no other person or thing’, connecting the concept with notions of individuality, character, uniqueness and singularity.1 In Italian, the term is defined as ‘the same, perfect equality; being one and the same person or thing that at first glance appeared distinct’.2 Even if the two idioms apparently recall the opposite concepts of uniqueness, singularity, and separateness, on the one hand, and same- ness, uniformity, and equivalence, on the other, distinctiveness clearly emerges as the pivotal concept.