Welt der Renaissance: Rom

Rome – the city of contradictions, of marble ruins, and of a comet-like resurgence to the status of world capital. Tobias Roth discovers, translates, and comments on the literary treasures of the time, taking us into a world filled with high art and eccentric clerics, ancient-loving poets, and harsh realities. At the beginning of the Renaissance, Rome is a heap of rubble. When Petrarch looks over Rome from the Capitol, little remains of the splendor of the ancient world capital. Instead of over a million, only about 20,000 people live in the vast area, where goats and cows graze among the stone witnesses of former greatness. However, with the arrival of power-conscious popes, the city begins to rise again. Money flows into the city, artists follow, massive construction projects are initiated, and art and poetry begin to flourish.

Renaissance expert Tobias Roth guides us through the astonishing life in Rome with all its contrasts, highs, and lows. Scholars like Flavio Biondo become enraptured in the desolation of ruins, statues like the Laocoön are unearthed, and while 130 dishes are served for lunch in the Vatican, Pietro Aretino writes his first major satire – the sarcastic testament of the papal house elephant Hanno. With Vittoria Colonna, the first printed female poet of the modern era establishes herself and exchanges poems with Michelangelo. Meanwhile, the talkative population shares in diaries and memoirs their experiences of growth and uncertainty, pilgrim flows and traffic disasters, and not least the bloodbath of the sacco di Roma, the looting of the city by German and Spanish mercenaries in 1527.