The Allure of Ruins

C2 Proficiency · Open Cloze · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

(0) ___ is something about a ruin that a complete building can never quite match. Travellers of the eighteenth century, (1) ___ whom no Grand Tour was complete without a visit to Rome's crumbling monuments, wrote rapturously of broken columns and roofless temples. So taken were they with such sights (2) ___ wealthy landowners began building artificial ruins in their own gardens; some even went so (3) ___ as to employ a 'hermit' to live in them. What explains this fascination? Part of the answer (4) ___ in the fact that a ruin invites the imagination to complete what time has destroyed. A ruin is also a reminder that nothing, (5) ___ grand, lasts for ever. Conservationists face a curious dilemma as a result. Restore a ruin too thoroughly and it ceases to be a ruin (6) ___ all; leave it untouched and it may collapse altogether. The solution, more often (7) ___ not, is to stabilise what remains without attempting to rebuild what has been lost, preserving the building, (8) ___ it were, in a state of perpetual but carefully managed decay.

The Allure of Ruins

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