Happy 4th Birthday RST - of Meier, Mosques and Kebabs

Richard Meier's suburban Tor Tre Teste church - Number 1 on the blog.  
That's Dianne at left. 

Having reached a couple milestones recently – 4 years of blogging as of today (Feb. 17) and more than 400 posts (the 400th went up November 20 – the rather esoteric Hamlet in the Weeds on sculptor Amleto Cataldi), it seems appropriate to look back and share some statistics with our loyal readers.

Amazingly enough (to us), several of the top 5 posts, and even the top 10, remain remarkably consistent from day to day, month to month, year to year.

And, you probably couldn’t guess the consistent posts in the top 5 – at least we couldn’t if Google Analytics didn’t tell us every day.

Coming in routinely in the top 5 are: Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church (Tor Tre Teste), the post on kebabs (Bill, you were right on that one),  Europe’s largest mosque.  Posts on Fascist architecture - which is the subject of dozens of posts - also regularly rank high  The post on Meier's church and the one on kebabs appeared 2-1/2 years ago, and the mosque 3-1/2.  But their popularity never seems to wane.  The church and the mosque are both on RST's Top 40 list, coming in at 17 and 24, respectively.

Inside Portoghesi's mosque

Architectural works by “starchitects” often appear in the top 10: E.g., besides Meier and Paolo Portoghesi (the mosque), Zaha Hadid and Massimiliano Fuksas.

The all-time top 10 includes three reasonably accessible tourist sites: Foro Mussolini/Foro Italico (#5 on the RST top 40), Piazza Augusto Imperatore (# 9), and Garbatella (#16).  And one suburb where tourists seldom venture: Centocelle. 

Readers have also been drawn to the rich and famous, like Elizabeth Taylor.

We learn from Google Analytics, not surprisingly, that the US is the top country, in terms of readers of the blog, with Italy second.  The third may be surprising, however, - it’s Russia (spammers, maybe?), followed by the English-speaking countries of the UK, Canada and Australia.  Of interest, perhaps only to computer wonks, our readers come in more through Safari than any other search engine, followed by Firefox, then Chrome, and only 4th, Explorer. But for operating systems, Windows is used twice as much as Mac.  Go figure.

Back to content: romethesecondtime is what is known as a “content blog” – we’d have to be that after 4 years of this!  We continue to be surprised at Meier’s staying power, along with the mosque and kebabs.

So next time you go to Rome, head for Portoghesi’s mosque, and be sure to pick up a kebab outside (if it’s market day).

Dianne