Rome: An Urban History from Antiquity to the Present

Description

Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis, this is the first book to take the long view of the Eternal City as an urban organism. Three thousand years old and counting, Rome has thrived almost from the start on self-reference, supplementing the everyday concerns of urban management and planning by projecting its own past onto the city of the moment. This is a study of the urban processes by which Rome's people and leaders, both as custodians of its illustrious past and as agents of its expansive power, have shaped and conditioned its urban fabric by manipulating geography and organizing space; planning infrastructure; designing and presiding over mythmaking, ritual, and stagecraft; controlling resident and transient populations; and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital. List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. A bend in the river 4 2. A storybook beginning 10 3. Ideological crossfire 19 4. Big men on the campus 32 5. 'Res publica restituta' 43 6. Memorials in motion: spectacle in the city 52 7. The concrete style 60 8. Remaking Rome's public core I 72 9. Remaking Rome's public core II 82 10. Continuity and crisis 93 11. 'Rus in urbe': a garden city 103 12. Administration, infrastructure, and disposal of the dead 114 13. Mapping, zoning, and sequestration 122 14. Tetrarchic and Constantinian Rome 132 15. Trophies and 'tituli': Christian infrastructure before Constantine 142 16. Walls make Christians: from fourth to fifth century 151 17. A tale of two Romes 160 18. The Rome of Goths and Byzantines 170 19. Christian foundations 180 20. From 'Domus laterani' to 'Romanum palatium' 188 21. The Leonine City: St Peter's and the Borgo 196 22. Via Papalis, the Christian 'decumanus' 205 23. The urban theaters of 'imperium' and SPQR 214 24. Housing daily life 222 25. Chaos in the fortified city 232 26. The Tiber River 241 27. Humanist Rome, absolutist Rome (1420-1527) 251 28. Planning Counter-Reformation Rome 261 29. Processions and populations 271 30. Magnificent palaces and rhetorical churches 281 31. Neoclassical Rome 292 32. Picturing Rome 303 33. Revolution and Risorgimento 313 34. Italian nationalism and 'romanita' 324 35. A city turned inside out 336 Glossary of Persons, Places, and Terms 349 Works Cited 363 Index 391