Welcome

We get more out of book discussions if we have read the book under consideration. It’s similar when visiting Rome: you will enjoy and appreciate the city much more if you know a little about it before you arrive. If you get ready before you go, you can lift your eyes from the pages of a guidebook, start thinking on your own, and season your meals with good conversation about a fascinating city.

But how should we get ready? My strategy is to find the order that underlies Rome’s cultural cacophony. The gist is to begin by putting aside the reassuring idea that Rome is an “Eternal City.” Instead, consider Rome as three distinct and opposed cities, which are divided by two periods of “transition” or, more accurately, cultural warfare. The first Rome was pagan, generally aristocratic, and eventually classical. We call it “Ancient Rome.” After a long struggle that included both persecution and counter-persecution, Rome’s pagan empire became Christian, and the art, architecture, and soul of the city changed. This “Christian Rome” had endured for almost 1,500 years, when the new ideas of the French Enlightenment were advanced first by powerful thinkers and later by Napoleon’s powerful armies. A little later the Italian movement known as the Risorgimento got rid of papal rule and introduced “Modern Rome.” This gives us this simple and useful schema with which to begin:

• ROME OF THE CAESARS:
  • Ancient, Pagan, and Aristocratic
  • Over a thousand years, traditionally 753 BC to 476 AD

• ROME OF THE POPES:
  • Medieval, Christian, and Monarchical
  • Over a thousand years, from roughly 350 to 1870

• ROME OF THE PEOPLE:
  • Modern, Secular, and Democratic
  • One hundred and fifty years (and counting), from 1870 until today

Organized on the basis of these three Romes, the podcasts associated with this site aspire to help others sense the weightiness and far-reaching consequences of the disagreements between Classical, Christian, and Contemporary Rome. These and related controversies, from which our own time is not free, concern the way we radically imperfect but occasionally godlike creatures should live our lives together in society. It should also help visitors to Rome to organize what they see and begin to reconstruct the rich cultural conversation, or argument, that is expressed by Rome’s stunning art and architecture.

New podcasts are added regularly. Access them here.