In this article, I start by examining the myth of the «great ruin» contained in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica (Venice, 1562), highlighting one particular aspect of this story: the theme of «vestiges», that is, of what remains after the destructive occurrence of a catastrophe. I then explore the different meanings of that story by using Patrizi’s previously published Dialoghi della historia (Venice, 1560) and I point out how the theme of the erosion, recovery and restoration of cultural traditions constitutes a leitmotif that runs through Patrizi’s whole oeuvre. In the last part of the article, finally, I focus on the specific interplay of nature and history, as this clarifies the equivalence between history and memory advocated by Patrizi as well as his conception of the relationship between the past and the future.