2

“The monumental is my sickness,” he said, “so naturally I was attracted to the Generalissimo, to the possibility of expressing my need for monumentality.”

Ficino and I had been surprised to learn he was still alive and living in the city, and now here we were in his tiny apartment.

“In an age of bureaucrats and salesmen-“ he jabbed a thick finger at us “- to discover a man with broader ambitions...so rare. I could not resist him. I could not miss my chance.”

He showed us the original plans for a tower which, if it had ever been built, would’ve been the greatest of what he called his Apocalyptic Towers.

"What was to go inside the tower?" Ficino asked.

“It would have been a museum, or possibly a prison. What’s important is the scale.”