Foundations of Rome

Why Rome? What is it about the Eternal City that continues to captivate, challenge, and inspire us?

In the final episode, let us reflect on the enduring significance of a city shaped by centuries of empire, faith, art, and contradiction. Drawing on the insights of Robert Hughes, Mary Beard, and Scott Samuelson, we explore Rome not as a monument to the past, but as a living city that invites us to question history, humanity, and ourselves.

From its ancient ruins and sacred spaces to its bustling streets and everyday encounters, Rome reminds us that history is never truly behind us. It is layered into the present, revealing the beauty, complexity, and contradictions of human civilisation.

As our journey comes to an end, we return to one final thought: perhaps Rome's greatest gift is not the answers it provides, but the questions it leaves us asking.

Rome is not a city with a single past. It is a city where many pasts exist at once.

In this episode of Foundations of Rome, we explore Rome as a palimpsest—a living landscape where ancient ruins, Christian churches, Renaissance palaces, Fascist monuments, and modern life occupy the same streets.

From the symbolic theatre of Piazza Venezia to the quiet continuity of Tiber Island, we examine how Rome has repeatedly reused, reshaped, and reinterpreted its past. But preserving so many layers creates tensions of its own: between archaeology and infrastructure, tourism and everyday life, and the desire to protect history without freezing the city in time.

Rome's story, ultimately, is not about uncovering one original past. It is about learning to read all its layers together.

Rome has always been a city built upon its past. But under Benito Mussolini, that past became something to be reshaped, weaponised, and placed at the service of a modern dictatorship. In this episode, we explore how Mussolini transformed the Eternal City into a stage for Fascist ideology—from the cult of Romanità and the construction of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, to the monumental architecture of EUR and the political appropriation of figures like Julius Caesar and Augustus.Behind the marble, monuments, and grand avenues lies a more complicated story: one of demolition, displacement, propaganda, and the deliberate simplification of history.

What happens when a regime tries to turn the past into a political script? And what remains when that regime is gone?

What happens when a city shaped by centuries of papal power suddenly finds itself caught in the currents of revolution? In this episode, we follow Rome through the upheavals of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—from Napoleon’s invasion and the short-lived Roman Republic of 1798 to restoration, Romanticism, and the revolutionary struggles of 1849.

We meet figures such as Mazzini and Garibaldi, and explore how the ruins of ancient Rome became symbols of liberty, resistance, and national identity. As the papal city finally becomes the capital of a united Italy in 1870, Rome stands at the crossroads of two worlds: the weight of its sacred past and the promise of a modern nation.

Why did Europe’s elite travel to Rome—not to witness power, but to contemplate its remains? In this episode, we enter the eighteenth century, where ruins replaced relics and reflection replaced reverence. From the Grand Tour’s young aristocrats to Piranesi’s haunting visions of decay, and from the rediscovery of Pompeii to the philosophical weight of fallen empires, we explore how Rome became a stage for Enlightenment thought and Romantic imagination. These were not just stones—they were warnings, mirrors, and meditations on the rise and fall of civilisation.

In this episode, I will guide you into the heart of Baroque Rome—a city transformed into a theatre of faith. From Bernini’s sweeping embrace at St Peter’s Square to the ecstatic vision of Saint Teresa and the illusionistic wonders of Jesuit churches, this episode unpacks how art, architecture, and spectacle became tools of the Counter‑Reformation. Discover how seventeenth‑century Rome proclaimed Catholic triumph not through armies, but through light, movement, and emotion carved in stone.

 

How does a city rise again—not from fire or conquest, but from memory? In this episode of Foundations of Rome, we trace the Renaissance transformation of Rome from a city of ruins and relics into a capital of art, architecture, and humanist ambition. From Pope Nicholas V’s grand vision to Bramante’s bold designs for Saint Peter’s, and from the revival of Vitruvius to Raphael’s luminous School of Athens, we explore how marble, manuscript, and imagination reshaped the Eternal City. This was not nostalgia—it was reinvention. Rome did not abandon its past. It assembled it, reinterpreted it, and crowned it with frescoes, domes, and classical dreams.

 

In this episode, we trace the rise of the Vatican from a modest medieval suburb to the spiritual and political heart of Catholicism. Journey through the Borgo—home to Saint Peter’s tomb, fortified by popes, and transformed by pilgrims, relics, and Jubilee years. Discover how centuries of devotion, architecture, and ambition reshaped Rome itself, turning sacred space into papal power and laying the foundations of the Renaissance city to come.