Rebuilding / Restoring Rome.
The Renewal of Buildingsand Spaces as Urban Policy, from Antiquity to thePresent
30-31 October 2019, Rome
École française de Rome, Sapienza Università di Roma
Call for papers
Everywhere in Rome, monuments are covered withancient or modern inscriptions that not only contain the name of the originalbuilder but also commemorate their restoration. Popes from the Quattrocento andCinquecento who acted as urban planners, such as Sixtus IV, presentedthemselves as ‘restorers’, even when they were actually modernising the City.This phenomenon is not restricted to the Renaissance period: many Romanemperors already claimed to be rebuilders, such as Augustus who repaired allthe damaged temples of Rome according to the Res Gestae, or SeptimiusSeverus who was called Restitutor Vrbis on his coinage. Rome thus seemsto be a city that constantly needs to be restored, rebuilt, born again. In thevein of the studies on urban heritage and memory and on cities’ resilienceafter disasters, more and more historians are interested in the question ofrestoration. This conference aims to investigate how the notions of restorationand rebuilding were a driving force of Rome’s urban transformation throughoutits history, from Antiquity to the 21st century, as well as apolitical program put forward by the authorities and an ideal more or lessshared by the different key actors of the city.
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