Renaissance Rome 1500-1559: A Portrait of a Society

If you're looking for a good, in-depth snapshot of life in Rome, this does a good job of priming you. There's not much "everyday life" type stuff in there, but it really does give you a sense of how things looked and how the government and religious systems of the time functioned. There are some fun bits about how Romans protested informally using a "battered ancient statue known to the Romans as 'Pasquino'," to which were tied ribald and occasionally libelous complaints against the Roman government once a year. You'll learn how Romans liked to adorn the sides of their houses with frescoes and mosaics, how the wealthiest of its citizens liked setting up "sculpture gardens" filled with the looted remains of the ruins all over Rome, and how devastated Rome was by the Sack of 1527--and how it recovered. You'll learn about the government officers that handled the streets, paving them and keeping citizens from building their houses out so far they blocked traffic (imagine that on I-285 in Atlanta). Rome in the Renaissance was built upon the vast success of its onetime glory, and though it came nowhere near that glory, it took advantage of it however it could. Since the Catholic Church dominated Rome, most of the chapters cover the Papacy in one way or another; other chapters cover Rome's economic life and how Rome dealt with the influx of foreigners who came to drink from the well of religious patronage. Everywhere there are neat touches, like how palaces had to shoehorn into an already-crowded street, or the common sight of Spanish prostitutes plying their business from their doorsteps. The author also writes about the households and practices of Church officials like cardinals, and about how the Papacy supported "poor cardinals" (like the English nobleman Reginald Pole, who defied Henry VIII regarding his annulment with Katherine of Aragon, then fled to Europe). Though the material has a lot of potential to sound dry or uninteresting, I found the writing magnetic and engaging, sounding very much like it was written by someone who's done plenty of research and knows what he's talking about. I give this 5 stars though it is far from complete. I'd have vastly preferred more numerous detailed maps, but combined with an atlas of Renaissance Europe and "The Marvels of Rome," a 12th-century travelogue, I got through all right. I also would want there to be some more "this is how people lived in a typical day" type of information and that was quite lacking. But overall, you'll learn a lot about the living society that was Rome from 1500-1559. Nor will you need more than a basic knowledge of Italian history to handle this book. If you're interested in Renaissance-era Roman history, you could not possibly go wrong with this book, though it will not, without a doubt, be the only book you'll need to fully learn the period.