Rome: A History in Seven Sackings

by Matthew Kneale

No city on earth has preserved its past as has Rome. Visitors stand on bridges that were crossed by Julius Caesar and Cicero, walk around temples visited by Roman emperors, and step into churches that have hardly changed since popes celebrated mass in them sixteen centuries ago.

These architectural survivals are all the more remarkable considering the violent disasters that have struck the city. Afflicted by earthquakes, floods, fires and plagues, it has most of all been repeatedly ravaged by roving armies. Rome: A History in Seven Sackings examines the most important of these attacks and reveals, with fascinating insight, how they transformed the city - and not always for the worse.
From the Gauls to the Nazis, Kneale vividly recounts those threatening the city, while drawing an intense and vibrant portrait of the city and its inhabitants, both before and after being attacked. In these troubled times when our cities can seem fragile, Rome's history offers a picture that is both shocking and also reassuring. Like the Neapolitans from Norman Lewis's Naples 44, Romans have repeatedly shrugged off catastrophes and made their city anew.

A meticulously researched, magical and novel blend of travelogue, social and cultural history, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings is part celebration of the fierce courage, panache and vitality of the Roman people, and part passionate love letter to Rome. This is a popular history of the famous, incomparable city like no other.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Italy, Ancient History, Historical, War, Audiobook

418 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2017

About the author

Matthew Kneale was born in London in 1960, read Modern History at Oxford University and on graduating in 1982, spent a year teaching English in Japan, where he began writing short stories.

Kneale is the son of writers Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr, and the grandson of essayist and theatre critic Alfred Kerr.

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m so glad to have read this book, it was an amazing chronicle of all the historical centuries the city of Rome has gone through, in it you will find a little about Gauls, Murderous emperors, bloodthirsty barbarians, corrupt Popes, famous architects and artists , learn a little about the church schism and the birth of the Reformation, nazis and fascists . In summary you will get a piece of history served up in just small bites that won’t make you feel full but will satisfy you (yeah I used a food pun....lol ). In short if you love classical history then you will love this book.

[Arjun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Constructed essentially as an anthology series of historical sackings, this is an ambitious attempt at writing the history of a city from its post-Roman origins without just a simple chronological narration. I think broadly speaking it works well and to Kneale's credit there is a lot of cross-referencing and comparative analysis of the different periods particularly in terms of demographics, economics, technology, food and architecture - all of which give a good sense of how we got to the present day.
Some chapters are more interesting and factually relevant to Rome as it is today than others. The sacking by Henry IV (1081), by the French under General Oudinot (1848) and the Germans during WW2 after Italy had surrendered (1943-45) are the standouts and unlike most books covering these events, Kneale writes from a uniquely Roman perspective. Useful for underscoring just what a brutal and often dark history belies such a great city (Garibaldi's attempted defence of the Republic in 1848 or the Ardeatine Massacre of 1944 being two examples within those chapters where the Italian perspective is much more valuable).
There are times when the narrative over 2,000 years becomes slightly overwhelming with such a huge cast of characters and it becomes somewhat hard to keep up (the twin Gothic chapters being particularly at fault for this). However, in general there are some fascinating stories presented here and the presence of some recurrent themes - e.g. realpolitik of (and between) various Popes, the prolonged mistreatment of Roman Jews or the building/re-building of some of the city's most famous monuments over the years - I think make this book a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in Rome.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love letter to Rome in 7 sieges though the moments in the 2500+ year history of the city they present are much more than the actual siege, but they comprise of a prelude with how the city changed from the previous moment and an epilogue with what happened next

The 7 epochal moments are alos very well chosen as they comprise the famous episode with the Gauls and the geese (Rome small but on the cusp of moving into the world stage), Alaric (the declining but still imperial Rome), the Gothic war when the imperial role of Rome is done and maybe another city wouldn't have recovered but the beginnings of the powerful papacy and the transformation of Rome into the Papal capital led to a fast recovery, the Canossa and follow-up (Henri IV got back and besieged the pope after the humiliation) when the papal-imperial/royal conflict heats up, the saco of 1527 when the most Catholic's majesty troops sack Rome (the culmination of the conflict and the end of the papacy as world power to a large extent though it lingered for a while), the Garibaldian/Mazzini defense against the French in 1848 and finally the nazi occupation and Allied liberation from 1943-1944 when Rome has already become the modern city of today

I would say that this book is even more enjoyable if the reader has actually visited the Rome of today (as remembering how much it impressed me even in a short though full 3-4 day visit) , but I would highly recommend it anyway

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read even if, as the author himself confesses, labelling some of these events as "sackings" is a bit of a stretch, while others were probably even more horrible than the already lurid histories depict.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has been described as 'one long love letter to the city of Rome ' but I found it a tedious potted history of almost infantile brevity hiding under a totally misleading title. This book is not well written and is certainly not written with any style or imagination. It has the clunky all inclusiveness of bad guide books - everything is mentioned, nothing is understood, nothing is illuminated, everything is made dull. A glance at sources is a frightening testament to a narrow reading of old sources and even more dated popular works by journalists. I can find nothing good to say about this book. Don't buy it. Don't read it.

There are many fascinating books about Rome by historians, artists, writers from all countries and all points of view - search them out, read them just do not read this book as you are likely to transfer the boredom it engenders onto to the city of Rome.

God what waste of my time reading this book.

[Athan Tolis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Matthew Kneale serves as a truly enthusiastic guide through the history of his adopted home city, Rome. With three thousand years to take you through, he faces an important problem: he needs to “choose his battles;” he truly stands no hope of both telling the whole history and keeping your interest.

So he chooses to take you on a history of sieges (though “sackings” does sound more dramatic!)

Rome’s been besieged many more than seven times, but that’s OK, the idea is not to tell you about sieges and sackings, it’s to impart some of Rome’s history on you, and hopefully some of the author’s love and admiration. To tell you about how people lived, how they were governed, what they wore, what and how Romans ate, what they drank, how often they bathed, where they lived, where their masters lived and how their society was structured. And then, of course, how the siege went, that’s in there too!

The book would be incomplete without the careful reconstruction of the historical events and without portraits of the historical figures who turned Rome into a battlefield, which are all present and correct; the book is worth reading for the many intrigues alone.

With one exception, his first six sieges are spaced out by 500 years from one another, to give the city time to grow (or shrink!) and evolve. This is not about the sieges, it’s about Rome, bottom line!

So you start with Gaul Brennus, who ravaged Rome in 387BC after defeating its army at the battle of Alia, you move on to Visigoth Alaric, whose success on his third attempt in 410AD probably caused his death to malaria which he probably got in Rome the same year, and from him to the unsuccessful Ostrogoth Witigis who was thwarted by Belisarius in 538, only for his successor Totila to capture the eternal city two years later.

Next comes (German) Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV’s three-year effort, that was crowned with success in year 1084, leading to his own coronation by his appointee Pope Clement III, followed by Norman Robert Guiscard’s re-taking of the city to re-establish Pope Gregory VII, one of several who excommunicated Henry. (this was all extremely confusing!!!)

Rome was at its filthiest, but also at its grandest (excluding classical times) when Matthew Kneale brings us back, to tell the story of the unfortunate Pope Clement VII (a lesser member of the Medici family), who was undone by Emperor Charles V of Spain and his Lutheran Landesknechte in 1527. This was a proper sacking, probably almost as bad as that by the Vandals in antiquity (which is not much documented and does not feature in the book). Also, this marks the last time in this book when Rome was actually an important city, geopolitically speaking.

From there it’s to the 1848 defeat of Garibaldi and Mazzini at the hands of the French, who’d come to reinstate the Pope, which of course was the preamble to the creation of the Italian state some fourteen years later. The book closes with the nine month German occupation of 1943.

The author makes a truly enormous effort to not only keep some type of narrative going, but also to revise the history you’ve just learnt and to recount the evolution of his city through time. You can’t really hop around randomly between sieges and sackings, this is a book to be read linearly.

Regardless, and perhaps it’s my fault for knowing so little, I’ve got to say I lost him often. There’s quite simply a whole lot of history (and far far far too many names of buildings and monuments) packed in these pages. But I did gain a very good understanding about how the city changed through time, for the evolution of the papacy and its role in the history of Rome and I was introduced to a number of historical figures who stand a decent chance of staying in my memory.

If you know Rome, I suspect this is an indispensable book.

Importantly, I most genuinely enjoyed reading this. It accompanied me everywhere for about a week!

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mathew Kneale is primarily a novelist and he uses his narrative skills to great effect when recounting the story of Rome from the attack on the Capitoline hill by Brennus and his Gauls, famously forestalled by the alarm cries of sacred geese, right up to the Nazi takeover after the flight of Mussolini.

Kneale carefully sets the scene for each of his vignettes, picking out the salient details to paint a vivid picture of Roman life before each invasion. I was fascinated to discover, for instance, that just before the invasion of Aleric, Rome had over three hundred public lavatories. You would be hard put to find one these days.

A lot of this is familiar territory – the excesses of popes, the ambition of emperors, the development of the pilgrimage industry, the glamour of Garibaldi – but Kneale knits it all together adroitly, managing to create a coherent picture from the disparate parts. In doing so, he mimics the characteristic qualities of his subject, a city that over time has absorbed and assimilated all those who sought to conquer it and made them part of its complex and fascinating identity.

[George McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Seemed like an interesting concept, tracing the history of the city in the context of its occupations by invading forces. Sort of Michenerian in scope, ranging from 250 BCE to 1945, but, the execution was lacking. Kneale tries to convey what life was like in Rome at each of these eras (there are lots of lice), but it ultimately reads like a bunch of anecdotes he is able to glean from the scanty reports of the times, and a number of his 'facts' don't seem to gibe with other sources. For example, his statement that malaria was eradicated in Rome by the Fascists, when in fact, it was a post war aggressive DDT campaign that really made the dent in the incidence of the disease. Also, he placed Rome as the largest city in Western Europe during the 11th century, when in fact, it was significantly smaller than Cordoba.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rome: A History in Seven Sackings [2017] - ★★★★1/2

“...I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life…Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).

Rome...the Eternal City. A city-legend. Matthew Kneale (the author of English Passengers) begins his account of the capital of Italy with these words - "There is no city like Rome" [2017: 1]. It is true. History is everywhere in Rome - one breaths it with the air and feels it in the walls. Rome also proved to be one of the most lasting cities in the world, enduring many natural disasters and...sackings. Rome's historical sackings are the topic of Kneale's book. He looks at the history of Rome through seven particular sackings (from Gauls to the Nazis) and we begin to understand how wars and enemy invasions shaped the city and contributed to it becoming what it is today.

The author looks at seven sackings of Rome - by (1) Gauls, (2) Goths, (3) "More Goths", (4) Normans, (5) Spanish and Lutherans, (6) French and, finally, (7) Nazis. With each of these sackings, Kneale first (i) looks at who the enemy was and what their positions were just before advancing on the city; then (ii) talks about the city itself, its economic situation, citizens and their way of life (everything from architecture to the state of medicine), just before the invasion; and, finally, (iii) talks about the sacking itself [Matthew Kneale, 2017: 2]. One of the great things about this book is how entertaining it is - Kneale writes in an engaging manner, and reading about the history feels like reading some exciting novel. The author dispenses with myths and misconceptions about Rome, revealing "true" Rome. Another merit of this book is that the author clearly shows the balance between warfare and civil life that existed at numerous times throughout history, and how that balance changed with each sacking. After all, people learn from history.

As the book is structured in a certain manner, the author has to include certain events and probably does not have time to talk about other elements/events to fit his structure. Another weakness is that Kneale sometimes makes references to more recent politics, which are distracting and needless, such as to the "American-style popular patriotism" on page thirteen or to "Barack Obama" on page twenty-two.

Matthew Kneale's fifteen-year research culminated in a very ambitious book, which is clearly-structured, well-written and entertaining to read. The scope of the book is immense. For example, there is as much in this book about the life and warfare in Ancient Rome, as about that Rome which was presented to the eyes of the Nazis in 1943. It is fascinating to read about the transformation of Rome through the sackings over hundreds and hundreds of years, and if you have even a slightest interest in the subject, this is a book to read.

[Kiril Valchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Враговете никога не бяха успели да превземат Анкх-Морпорк. Е, в известен смисъл успяваха, при това твърде често. Градът посрещаше волните варварски нашественици, но озадачените нападатели някак си винаги откриваха след няколко дена, че вече не притежават собствените си коне, а след няколко месеца бяха просто още едно малцинство със свои собствени драсканици по стените и магазини за хранителни стоки."
"Ерик", Тери Пратчет

С "Rome: A History In Seven Sackings" Матю Нийл (автор на прекрасната "Английски пасажери") засвидетелства своята любов към града, който го приютява вече 15 години.
Избира да разкаже бурната история на Рим по един малко нестандартен начин- трагедия в седем части. Седем от най-значимите плячкосвания, които е преживяла (днешната) италианската столица:
- 387г. пр.н.е. (гали);
- 410г. (вестготи);
- 546г. (остготи);
- 1084г. (нормани)
- 1527г. (испанци и лутерани)
- 1849г. (французи)
- 1943/44г. (нацисти)
Нийл не се спира само на военната окупация през съответната година, а връщайки се десетилетия и векове назад, описва по интересен и достъпен начин, що за хора са били и жителите на Рим, и нашествениците.
Над две хилядолетия на наводнения, земетресения, пожари, епидемии, преврати, обсади и войни, а Вечният град нехае и продължава да се носи по реката на времето.

[Paul Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, the author uses the framing of seven occasions that it has been invaded to examine how the Eternal City has changed over the last two and half millennia. From the first breach by Gauls when it was a budding regional power through several by roving Scandinavians, up to the Third Reich after Mussolini was deposed and the Italians joined the Allies in World War II, each presents a snapshot of a quite different Rome. My favourite is in the 11th Century where Rome has become a backwater and the city is little more than a collection of villages, people living with plenty of room in once-crowded tenements and parts of the city become pasture and fields.



The author does an excellent job of painting an image of each iteration, and bringing together various written and archaeological sources, filling out the detail of social background along with decades of relevant history, and sometimes a sketch of the centuries between each event to bring us up to date.



Well worth a read, and a fine jumping off point for more in-depth reads.

[Zulfiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful reading experience. The Eternal City as it is known has witnessed and withstood a lot in its glorious and not so glorious history.
The authors explores the history of major events through the history of major battles and what preceded those events. The precedents are not only military, but historical, cultural, and religious. This is what makes this book so informative. The approach to the narrative structure is also quite original. The author first mentions one of the proverbial sackings, and then tells the backstory that explains why and how it was possible.
It also adds significant substance and meat to the story, and despite the somewhat original approach to the major story of Rome, the book also flows well and sounds harmonious and coherent.
Additionally, I found personal deviations about some of the historical participants quite engaging, and the book is full of those small gems.

I highly recommend it. It is not a brilliant book, but it is damn good.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you write a history of a city as old as Rome for the layperson that isn't 600 pages long? I couldn't resist Kneale's approach, even if he does have to stretch the definition of a sacking to make it work.

According to ye olde Wikipedia, Rome has, indeed, been sacked seven times--but Kneale rolls up the attack by the Vandals in 455 in the chapter on the Visigoths' attack and treats Totila's two sackings in 546 and 549-550 in one chapter. From the brutal sackings of the earlier years--most of which involved wholesale murder (and worse), destruction, looting, and rape--Kneale moves to the comparatively tamer sieges/occupations of Rome by the French in opposition to Garibaldi and his liberal movement for a unified Italy, and by the Nazis. This is not to belittle the loss of life that did occur in the later events--but given the cultural cred that Rome had achieved by the 1800s and 1900s, it didn't suffer as much as it did in 1592 (and dang, did it suffer in 1597).

Still, if you're going to write a history of Rome, you can't just stop in the 1500s, which was a big part of why I picked up this book--I wanted a concise history that went beyond the Roman Empire (good thing I wasn't familiar with the traditional seven sackings or the subtitle might have put me off). The only downside to Kneale's slight reinterpretation rather than a full-scale overhaul is that change accelerates as the years move on, so that the jumps from 1527 to 1849 and from 1849 to the 1930s feel so much greater than any of the others. I'm not familiar enough with Italian history to know if there were other invasions that might have qualified for a new list of sackings, so maybe Kneale's choices in the modern era were limited.

Each chapter follows a formula that, far from feeling formulaic, was extremely helpful: We start with a map of Rome in the year of the sacking; part I opens with an anecdote and the historical and political background; part II zooms in on everyday life and culture of the era, usually with some variation of, "if a traveler from the last sacking could see Rome now..."; and part III tells us about the siege/invasion/sacking itself.

Much of this book was new to me and gave me much to appreciate when/if I make it to Rome. Kneale is an expat who clearly loves his adopted city and gave us plenty of things to look out for.

Quote / Thought Roundup

12) I was impressed to learn that Rome didn't just sprout up out of an existing village the way many other cities did. Kneale tells us that there was a large-scale effort to level the ground between the hills by importing dirt to create the Roman forum. If only they'd thought to lay it out a bit more neatly!

54) Apparently Julius Caesar banned carts from the streets of Rome by day to prevent gridlock...though that made for noisy nights! As New York considers traffic control methods, I hope someone on the urban planning committee knows a little history.

Chapter 1 felt a bit thin on info about Rome--it felt like most of the info about 390 BCE came in Chapter 2 during that part II comparison to life in 410 CE.

106) Is it a spoiler if it's history that happened 1500+ years ago? Anyway, this one shocked me: though the sources may exaggerate, apparently Rome sat nearly empty for 40 years after the Ostrogoth sacking in 550. Considering that it had previously been one of the most populous cities in Europe, even at its low ebb, this completely bowled me over.

One thing that struck me in general was that the waves of invaders came from all over Europe and some always settled down to stay. Italian Americans take such pride in their Italian roots, perhaps with particular affection for their ancestors' regions, but Italians themselves seem like an incredibly diverse lot. I remember talking with some coworkers while visiting British colleagues listened in amusement as we ran through our varied (if mostly European) backgrounds, eventually commenting that they were "just British". Kneale's book really drove home for me how we shouldn't just take an assumption like that for granted.

123) I'm going to risk quoting this one because it's a fantastic image:
[In 1021, Rome] was a kind of Gulliver's Travels town, where tiny houses existed among vast ruins. Many Romans lived actually inside the ruins...making their homes in the broken remains of thousand-year-old apartment blocks, in long-dry baths, and in the storerooms and corridors of abandoned theatres and stadiums. The colosseum was now the city's largest housing complex.
What a sight to imagine. Is that an archeologist's dream, or their nightmare? There must be so many competing academic specialties every time a new dig starts...

135) It was interesting to learn that for much of Rome's history Jews were *relatively* well-treated by the church because of their connection to Jerusalem and the Old Testament, to the extent that some rabbis actually advised the popes. It goes so counter to everything that I've learned about the anti-Semitic rhetoric spread by the Catholic church. Of course, if there's benevolent racism, I'm sure there's such a thing as benevolent anti-Semitism, too, and Kneale does give some examples of awful treatment. With the rapid papal turnover, the cultural whiplash between being respected and protected by some popes only to be reviled and disgraced by others must have been exhausting. Still, the periods of relative protection probably explain why Rome had one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.

151) In the 1150s, the new senate set up a guard to try to protect the ruins of ancient Rome from further destruction. Yay!

204-204) The 1527 sack was brutal, but even the lay-soldiers had a little smarts. Some, who found a Renaissance artist at work, chose not to castrate or kill him but to press him into painting for them. I was most impressed that in the middle of a sacking, soldiers avoided looting banks so that their captives would be able to withdraw ransom. I mean, why settle for a ransom--why not just loot all the money from the banks? Okay, maybe they weren't so smart after all...

I can't remember what page this was on, but Kneale points out that Henry VIII made his request to divorce Katherine of Aragon shortly after the 1527 sack of Rome. I can't believe that this was never once mentioned in all the books I read during my Tudor historical fiction phase! It would have been huge news in the Christian world--Kneale compares it to September 11--and even speculates that the pope might have been game to appease Henry if the request had come before the sacking.

334 & 352) The Holocaust comes to Rome...and German diplomats Weizsacker and Mollhausen did more to try to stop the roundup of Jews than the unconcerned Vatican did. I'd heard that Pope Pius XII was useless, but dang--to have Nazis do more than you to save Jewish lives? I was also impressed at how many Roman Jews survived the war compared to other parts of Europe. According to Kneale, over 10,000 of Rome's population of 12,000 made it--an unacceptable number of deaths in any situation, but practically a miracle for the Holocaust. As he puts it, "Centuries of cynicism and distrust of authority had borne fruit" in the comparatively large number of ordinary Romans willing to protect innocent people. Of course, he notes, there were plenty of Nazi collaborators, but compared to what happened in much of Europe, Rome's story seems remarkable.

So that's it! If you want a crash-bang introduction to the history of Rome, this book is a pretty good one. Just accept that you will probably struggle to keep some names straight, especially in the years of high leadership turnover in the 1100 and 1520s, and that the later years are going to have some big time jumps.

[Katie.dorny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history of Rome in seven sackings was more like here’s the history of the goths..and btw Nazis.

It was an interesting audiobook and I really enjoyed the delving into history of Rome that hasn’t been thoroughly explored before.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work attempts to condense of the history of Rome into seven main sections, usually tied to when some foreign power or entity "sacks" the city, from the Gauls during the Republic to the Allies and Nazis fighting over the Eternal City in the latter stages of World War II. From the seven main "sackings", Kneale not only discusses the actual conquests, but offers context for what life in the city was like, the geo-political, economic and social conditions. It is a mix of academic history and interesting tourist guide facts. It will not cover all aspects of Roman history, but it hits enough of the key points. This might be worth the read for a history buff who wants to go beyond the history described in a Rick Steves' guides. I think this would be a better hard-copy read as opposed to audiobook, but still, not a bad history of such a key world city.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roman history has probably been approached from every conceivable angle and in every genre. Given that, writers never tire of trying to find a new angle. This was a well researched book. It is clearly written. However, I confess that even after brushing up on my background knowledge and giving it a second go, I found it somewhat hard to follow and absorb. The author traces Roman history through seven major sackings that cover Ancient Rome to World War II. In each section, he reviews changes in Rome since the previous section. However, the author can’t resist dropping in lots of material not covered in the book and expecting readers to follow his jumps and flashbacks with little framework. It was more frustrating than it needed to be.

[Alasdair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty here that's of interest and very readable, full of evident enthusiasm. But frustrating as it's one of the worst proofed books I've seen. Articles (definite and indefinite) appear utterly arbitrary, and better editing would have picked up its repetitiveness and some inconsistencies and contradictions (quite often people mostly did x and then mostly did y, which is the opposite). Awkward expression throughout makes it hard to believe this was written by an award-winning novelist.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I read like it was a novel. An interesting group of articles about the different sacks of Rome that is a history book and a telling of the city history.
Very interesting and fascinating.
Recommended.
Many thanks to Simon&Schuster and Edelweiss for this ARC

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way over on the pop side of pop history. A little too dramatized, with a few too many bold and vaguely-sourced claims.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rome is the eternal city, it always rises from the ashes like a phoenix, so an appropriate historical narrative to chronicle an incredibly long history are the various instances people may have written off the eternal city.
Beginning with the Gallic or Celtic sack of Rome in 387, and moving to the famous sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth, famously illuminated in St Augustine's City of God, to the occupation of Rome by Germany and later the allies in WWII.
Kneale provides some interesting scholarship to these accounts, including insights that Alaric's sack of Rome may have been grossly exaggerated by the accounts, as it was more a siege than an actual sack.
The later part detailing Mussolini's rule of Italy sheds valuable light, revealing that Rome has a much greater Fascist imprint than many would like to acknowledge, but this, according to Kneale, isn't as bad as one may assume as Mussolini's brand of Fascism was tame when compared to the Naziism or Bolshevism of his day.
Like many works, Kneale's account succumbs to the tendency to devote far too much time to recent history, particularly WWII, as the chapter on WWII is heavily detailed and ends up feeling overly long, but on the whole, minor snags in what is otherwise a brilliant and highly readable account.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great quick read that gave a whirlwind look at the history of Rome from antiquity to the present day. I loved the set-up; each chapter had a standard formula with who was doing the sack, the state of the city at the time, and then the sack itself and how it changed Rome.

I personally think this would be an excellent book to pick up if you're going to Rome and want a little more background on some of the city. Kneale does an excellent job at telling you when some of the greatest monuments were built and how they were used across the centuries (believe it or not, the Colosseum was an apartment building in much of the medieval period). How some of the more famous piazzas changed from ancient Roman chariot racing grounds to the popular gathering places they are today was also fascinating.

I could really feel Kneale's love affair with the Eternal City and it made it such an enjoyable reading experience.

[Wouter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on the history of Rome, taking snapshots at certain intervals, every time just when the eternal city's walls are about to breached once again. The structure of each chapter (background - description of city life - the siege itself) takes you by the hand without feeling too forced. It also allows for deep dives into the lives of ordinary Romans instead of rehashing the same old stories of the rich and famous.

The author could have spent a little bit more time on why he chose these seven sackings and skipped other more famous and interesting sackings like the sacking by the Vandals (which gave it's name to vandalism) and the raids by the saracens.

[John Isles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sackings were by Gauls, Goths, more Goths, Normans, Spanish & Lutherans, French, and Nazis. These grim episodes are linked by enough narrative to yield a continuous history of the city from its legendary origins to the present day, during which the author makes real for the reader what it was like to live in the city during each succeeding age.

I had just a couple of quibbles. The Byzantine emperor of pages 141-5 was Alexius Comnenus, not (seven times) Comemnus; and the Fascist slogan quoted on page 293 should read "Necessario vincere piu necessario combattere" - not "combattare."

I've read numerous histories of Rome, but I don't recall enjoying one more than this.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not find the Gauls and Visigoths, et al as interesting as I expected. Less detail would have improved the book for me. But of course, if I had known that ahead of time, I would not have chosen the book. What I did find very interesting are the sections of the book covering relatively more recent history, the corrupt popes and Mussolini. I knew a bit about the popes and especially remember when the Catholic Church struck many saints from existence in the 1960's, reporting that not only were they not saints but many never existed! It was a shock to me at the time. I didn't know that they were created in a public relations campaign, in which Rome competed with Jerusalem for pilgrims and travelers and money.
The final chapter, about the Nazis and Mussolini, was the most interesting and confirmed facts I had learned from other books: that (ironically) more Italian Jews survived the war than the Jews of other European countries and the Italian army did not fight well because they were not invested in the aims of the war.
I have learned a bit about history, ancient to modern, and a bit about myself--stick to modern history.

[James Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes confusing as it dives from the events a chapter is focusing on to historical, political and social context, it is overall an interesting read. A history of Rome - especially regarding Rome under Fascist rule - that I knew little of.

Definitely needs proof reading. Spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and sentences that had been started in one way but clearly ended as if written in a different way, plus sources appear to be thrown in at seemingly random intervals.

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het raamwerk van deze geschiedenis - de plunderingen - voelt door de opzet van het boek er soms wat losjes overheen gedrapeerd. Kneale geeft de indruk de plunderingen alleen als sausje te gebruiken om een totale geschiedenis van 'de Romeinen' te schrijven ten tijde van 7 uiteenlopende tijdvakken. Het boek komt door deze opzet vaak rommelig over en springt van de hak op de tak. Desalniettemin geeft het een mooie inkijk in bepaalde tijdvakken uit de geschiedenis van Rome waar ik minder bekend mee was.

[Richard Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable way of learning about Rome throughout the ages. Each sacking is a clear marker in the cities vast history and it builds on each sacking and gives great detail. Didn't take me long to get through this one as I "couldn't put it down"

[Epha · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a frequent visitor of Rome, I absolutely devoured the book. My spouse was very annoyed with my constant ‘did you know…?’ I wrote down many interesting facts to tell my students when I’m in Rome again. Definitely recommend!

[Margaret]

Did not finish.

Just couldn't get up the enthusiasm beyond about chapter 2.