Ricerc@Sapienza

A visit to ruins often raised and still raises the emotion of silence and, therefore, the idea that ancient spaces implicate the possibility of reflection and abstraction from the noise of reality and contemporaneity. The present contribution specifically focuses on the silent descriptions of ancient ruins and the related emotions which travellers experience, pointing to the difference of descriptions of ancient places and cities – before they became ruins – made by the people living therein.

This article analyses accounts of travels to Asia written by Bengali women in the early
20th century, a period when there was an immense intellectual curiosity about Asia in colonial India.
Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 was widely interpreted as a victory over Western
hegemony in Asia. The notion of a pan-Asian identity based on a shared history and cultural heritage
was debated and popularized in the Bengal public sphere. Together with this, there was also a