The project of this volume, created in occasion of the second Rome Commission (a yearly commission created by FOTOGRAFIA – International Festival of Rome) gave birth to the now ten-year project site specific. Olivo Barbieri , always attentive to metropolitan mutations and the relationship between reality and virtuality, refers to the concept of avatars, or physical representation of a person in a virtual world: even an entire city can be the representation of itself. Historical city, but also a place of contemporary, all of Rome comes into what we might call a temporary installation: structures and infrastructures, monuments, buildings, neighbourhoods. Viewed from afar, the city looks like a big scale model, dominated by an immobile time which is also our present, lasting identity and fundamental part of our sense of belonging.