De Civitate Angelorum

DeCivitate Angelorum is based on a simple principle: Los Angeles, where Donatien Grau lived and worked, notably at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, was built as the extreme point of the United States of America, before Asia, and therefore as the extreme point of the West.
That’s why J. Paul Getty himself built his Getty Villa here, taking over the Villa dei Papiri in what he saw as the American equivalent of Campania, the home of the Roman elite – Malibu. In keeping with this history, Donatien Grau has written a book about Los Angeles entirely in Latin. The text appears in this language alone. The title “De Civitate Angelorum” (literally “On the City of Angels”, or “On Los Angeles”) takes its cue from Saint Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei” (“The City of God”). This is a reference to 5th-century Latin, which accepts its position after the great Roman history and in front of the great ancient library. The text is full of “centons”, taking up the history that preceded it. It is thus like a counterpart to the “post-history” embodied by Los Angeles.

With the support of the Pious Establishments of Rome