A line from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” describing the repurposing of once glorious Clarice:

“They grabbed everything that could be taken from where it was and put it in another place to serve a different use…wrought iron gratings torn from the harem windows were used for roasting cat-meat on fires of inlaid wood.”

Splendor, rearranged “in a different order, no less appropriate to the inhabitants’ needs than it had been before.” And maybe more so.