And then I learnt that Louis XIV's guns had once flattened it, so what I was admiring was a risen phoenix - the outpouring of civic pride.
The first Spanish military officer who explored Palenque, in 1784, thought it was a risen Atlantis, built by Rome or Carthage.
But if India is indeed a risen power, then it has risen despite its terrible poverty — despite lingering inequality and despite widespread deprivation that has left millions in conditions that are almost medieval.
Totalitarianism has disappeared, except in a few small countries like Cuba and North Korea; a risen Asia represents as much a cultural as an ideological challenge; religion has made a political comeback everywhere.
As Dean, Dane DeHaan charges the film with a witty, inspired interpretation of an icon on the rise, though it was a fetchingly bearded Pattinson – arguably a risen icon, to judge by the red carpet squeals – that the crowds turned out to see.
The confusing indeterminacy of those narratives might then become less of a problem than a theological pointer -- toward a risen Jesus not to be confined to the past or to memory but also "not grasped, owned or perfectly obeyed by his friends".
