From the mythological founding of the city by Romulus and Remus to the construction of Old St. Peter’s, from Bernini’s Baroque interventions to Richard Meier’s 21st-century renovation around Augustus’ Ara Pacis, the forces of creation and erasure, manipulation and reformulation have been a constant within the urban center of Rome. As caput mundi, Rome has borne the pressures of the imaginations and desires of emperors, popes, dictators, pilgrims, artists, and, last but by no means least, its own urban inhabitants. This class will examine the architecture and urban development of the Eternal City over the course of the last two millennia. We will focus on the many factors that shape the urban process, including notions of urban identity, motives of urban creation, and modes of urban patronage. In addition to issues that correspond to urban space in general, we will also consider those particular to the city of Rome, such as the weight of her history, the manner in which her monuments have employed the past as they have looked to the future, and the tensions inherent in the city that has been proclaimed the capital of empires and the capital of Christianity. While the immediate goal will be to study the history of the city of Rome, the larger goal will be to provide a conceptual framework with which students can consider issues of creation of urban space.
HISTART Distribution Requirements: Medieval, Early Modern, Europe
