Rome: The Growth of the City from the Return of the Popes to the Present

An Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series

Map of Rome, 1873

This workshop series takes as its focus the development of the city from the return of the Popes in the fifteenth century to the present day, an extended period acknowledging the widespread recognition of the enduring importance of historic Rome for the contemporary city. Present urban structures continue to reflect the city's long history and the ongoing attention to both ancient Rome and to the extensive building and early town planning projects of the Popes.

The time frame also acknowledges the enduring fascination of Rome as a focus of the Western imaginary, and the continuing interest in the space of Rome as fantasy, factors that have contributed to central formations of Western art and literature. Rome's consistent availability for representation, and the debates that have surrounded these visual, literary, architectural and philosophical discourses, argue for any serious, comprehensive study of Rome to be dependent upon the inclusion of a past that has continuing weight for the present and for present choices.

The establishment of Rome as capital of a unified Italy and the history of its subsequent development, whether politically, economically, socially or culturally, enlarges the array of issues that have contributed to the enormous transformation and expansion of the city as it exists today. The aim of this workshop series is to consider Rome's artistically and culturally distinctive past, not as alternatives to its history since 1870, but as part of ongoing political and administrative choices about the city and its future that have been and are continuing to be made.

Images of Rome not only constitute an important history of the city's development, recording buildings that have been demolished and eras now past, they contribute to ideas about the city, both past and present, that inform and shape a cultural memory organised around place. For this reason, a major focus of this workshop is an engagement with the city through the proliferating forms of its visual records, from painting to maps, town plans, buildings, ruins, prints, film, photography and video, together with the cultures of souvenirs that have been produced from the early pilgrims to the grand tour to present day memorabilia. The existence of such rich visual records of Rome also encourages a recognition of the specificities of different forms and the ways practitioners have chosen to engage differently with the city over time, through the potential offered by their chosen media.


Future Events

Seminar 8, titled Peripheries, will be held at UCL on 14 March 2008. Programme details will be posted as they become available. Admission is free, but places are limited. To register please contact Dr Lesley Caldwell or Dr Dorigen Caldwell.


Previous Seminars

  1. Contemporary Encounters with 19th Century Developments 3 June 2005
  2. Mapping the City from Bufalini to the Piani Regolatori 11 November 2005
  3. Dealing With Ancient Rome I: The Scholarship of Antiquity from the Renaissance to the Baroque 28 April 2006
  4. Dealing With Ancient Rome II: The Development of Scientific Archaeology and the Encounter with the Modern City 2 June 2006
  5. Roman Identities 20 October 2006
  6. The Papacy 16 February 2007
  7. From Pilgrims to Tourists 22 June 2007

Related Material


Links

Further information of interest may be found on the following sites:


Acknowledgements

The first seminar was jointly organised with the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL.

The series is supported by: