Art History 232RM - Renaissance Cities: 'Rome'

Renaissance Rome was a bundle of contradictions: a place of earthly corruption and sacred pageantry, crumbling ruins and glittering palaces, decay and renewal. While still impressive, the city had fallen far from its ancient glory days as capital of an empire. This course begins in the early 1400s, when the papacy returned after an absence of more than a century to reclaim a rundown, depopulated, lawless place. We trace the remarkable series of artistic, architectural, intellectual, and urbanistic transformations that, by 1600, had prepared Rome for a renewed role on the world stage.