Anthony Majanlahti’s book, The Families Who Made Rome: A History and a Guide
is simultaneously a social history of Rome’s most noble families and a
guidebook that allows you to see Rome in a whole new way. If
you’ve ever wandered from Palazzo Barberini to Piazza Colonna or from
the Villa Borghese to the Palazzo Medici and wondered who built all
these grand palaces, piazzas, and gardens, then this book is for you!
The book
begins with an introduction to the “Broken City,” the Rome created by
the long Middle Ages, when power struggles and financial woes took
their toll on the city that had once been the capital of the Roman
Empire. From there, Majanlahti sets out to show us how the
magnificent Rome we experience today came into being and he places much
of the responsibility for the rejuvination of the city in the hands of
its most noble residents - families such as the Colonna, the Della
Rovere, the Farnese, the Borghese, and the Barberini.
The book
is divided into chapters that focus on the architectural and artistic
achievements of a particular family. These chapters make great
reading for the arm-chair traveler, but also serve as an interesting
guide for visitors to Rome.
Order The Families Who Made Rome from Powell’s
Chatto and Windus, 2005. ISBN 0701176873
Jake Morrissey’s book, The Genius in the Design, reveals the intense rivalry between two maestri,
Gianlorenzo Bernini and his contemporary Francesco Borromini. The
two artists were born only a year apart and both achieved success in
the art world of seventeenth-century Rome. Though today, Bernini
is the perhaps the better-known artist, it would be safe to say that
both Bernini and Borromini should be credited with the invention and
elaboration of the Roman Baroque style.
Bernini,
the savvy courtier, curried the favor of five popes, while the
melancholy Borromini, won only the dedication and patronage of two
pontiffs. Early in their careers, Borromini and Bernini worked
together for a short period of time, however they quickly went their
separate ways and developed two entirely different means of expressing
similar Baroque ideas.
This
book - which blends a social history of Baroque Rome
with the biographies of Bernini and Borromini - explores the
circumstances that brought these artists into a head-to-head
competition that transformed Rome into one of the most beautiful cities
in Europe, but ultimately ended when Borromini took his own life.
William Morrow, 2005. ISBN 0060525339