Shaping Renaissance Rome

This year the eyes of the Catholic world will once again turn to Rome as the city celebrates the Jubilee—a tradition that has occurred every twenty-five years since the fifteenth century. In this seminar, we will investigate the architectural and urban history of Rome, stressing projects (both realized and ideal) conceived during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The city will be analyzed as the product of successive interventions that have created a deeply layered topography. How Rome has continued to build upon its past, both literally through physical reuse and figuratively through symbolic appropriation, from the time of Pope Martin V to Pope Sixtus V, will thus serve as a key theme. Working within this overarching framework, each class session focuses on a thematic group of projects that will be studied in relationship to one another rather than as independent monuments. We will examine churches, palaces, villas, public amenities, streets, and piazzas through the functional demands that shaped them and the life that went on in and around them. Topics under discussion include architectural and urban palimpsest; the resurgence of interest in antiquity; building typologies; self-aggrandizement by means of architectural patronage; the reverberations of the Counter-Reformation in architecture; the role of urban rituals and spectacles; and the representation of the city and its buildings in drawings, maps, and prints.