Rome: An Urban History from Antiquity to the Present

by Rabun Taylor, Katherine Wentworth Rinne, Spiro Kostof

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cities

448 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2016

Reviews

[Cameron Dougal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accessible but a bit scattered. Different authors between chapters so some are more engaging than others. I skimmed before a trip to Rome just to get a better feel for the history of the city’s urban form and it was good for that purpose.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only textbook I've been assigned that wasn't boring and painful to read. I wish all assigned texts were as accessible as this one.

[Zexas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read the ancient part (chapter 1- 14). It's a good introduction to Roman archaeology and the topology of Rome. But I don't like the way the author categorized the history of Rome.