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"Nowhere is Rome less well known than in Rome"
Anyone who has lived even briefly in the Eternal City knows how blasé the natives are about their home, and how they view with bemused indulgence the passions it stirs in so many foreign hearts. Of course there are Italians who have written about Rome, notably Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante, but the vast majority of literary outpourings have come from foreigners. Here is a partial list of works you might like to read before your trip:
If you love reading the correspondence of famous people, you'll find extensive musings about Rome in the published letters of Ibsen, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gogol, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Lizst, Mendelssohn, Florence Nightingale, Rilke, Will Rogers, Mary Shelley, Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Wolff, among others. And lovers of the classics will find Rome the setting in various works by James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, William Thackeray and Emile Zola.
While you're immersed in these tomes, you might like to listen to Respighi's Roman Triptych, featuring The Pines of Rome, The Fountains of Rome and The Festivals of Rome.
A Literary Companion to Rome: Including Ten Walking Tours (Literary Companion to Rome)
by John Varriano
Rome
, the Eternal City: it is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the visitor is conscious of the echoes
of antiquity. Artists, writers, historians, poets--all have included Rome in their travels; and their reactions--whether
amazement, adulation, or surprise--have added to the city's allure. James, Ibsen, Dickens, Goethe, Woolf,
and Wilde are among those who have written with passion about Rome, and through them we rediscover a city
of grandeur and intimacy, as vibrant and sensual as ever.
Arranged as a series of walks through the city, this book is both an illuminating guide for the visitor to
Rome and a delight to read at home for those who love the city and want to enrich their knowledge of it. John
Varriano, a professor of art history, has written numerous works on Roman art and architecture. He divides
his name between the United States and a flat in Rome.
(Click
here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
When in Rome
by Robert J. Hutchinson
Lighthearted and altogether fascinating, When in Rome is a delightful backstairs tour of one of the world's most mysterious and eccentric cities. With his wife and three young sons, Robert Hutchinson moved to Rome shortly before his thirty-ninth birthday, intending to explore the Vatican in depth. He sought to capture "the personality of the place: the smells and the traffic, the rich delicacies of Roman food, the perils of the Italian language, the way Italian monsignori push their way to the front of the line, just like their lay countrymen." When in Rome is the extraordinary journal of his Roman sojourn.
With playful good humor, Hutchinson introduces the varied and colorful individuals who live and work in the Vatican. In the process, he explores the mysterious orders of medieval knights, some dating back to the First Crusade, which still play a vital role in the Vatican; explains how bumbling Vatican archaeologists found, and then lost, the bones of St. Peter; probes the sex lives of the popes, from the "pornocracy" of Sergius III to the incestuous orgies of Rodrigo Borgia; experiences high fashion in the Holy See, including a visit to the pope's personal tailor; encounters the weird relics of Catholicism, such as the mummified body of St. Pius X and a museum made entirely out of human bones; recounts the true story behind the True Cross, now kept in a run-down church near the Colosseum; and much, much more.
Humorous, irreverent, but ultimately respectful, When
in Rome does for the
Vatican what A Year in Provence did for the French countryside, in an unforgettable
and unprecedented eyewitness account of one of the most fascinating places
on Earth.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
As the Romans Do: An American Family's Italian Odyssey
by Alan Epstein
Amazon Reader's Review: "Alan Epstein takes you in his book on a wonderful and enchanting journey to The Eternal City of Rome. I can relate to Alan and his family. I was in Rome in 1999 and fell deeply in love with this wonderful city and the infatuation hasn't left me ever since. This book is one of the finest about Rome. Alan takes you into the heart of what daily encounters are like in Rome. Among the people, the beautiful style of the women of Rome, how the bambini are cherished in Rome, and most of all the wonderful food of this magnificent country. Beware: once you read As The Romans Do you will be quickly taken and find yourself rather quickly booking yourself a one-way ticket to Rome. Great job Alan! This is for sure my favorite book on my favorite place of Rome. A great tribute to the Eternal City!"
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Rome: The Biography of A City
by Christopher Hibbert, Grover Gardner
The definitive coffee table book about Rome, with gorgeous paintings and photos, as well as an engaging introduction to the Eternal City's history.
(Click here for price and order information)
Living in Rome
by Bruno Racine, Alain Fleischer (Photographer), Deke Dusinberre
(Translator)
With five chapters exploring the beauty of Rome, including its architecture, gardens, interiors, museums, and artisans' and antiques shops, plus a "Connoisseur's Guide," award-winning writer Racine and Fleischer, a filmmaker and photographer, present a side of Rome rarely observed by the casual visitor. Though not as comprehensive as the now-classic Blue Guide: Rome (Norton) or as practical as Dorling Kindersley's Rome (from the "Eyewitness" travel guide series), this is a work of love and passion. In elaborate detail and with delightful photographs, Racine and Fleischer capture the essence of the city, but in a manner that is of little use to everyday tourists. Those who want to enjoy the breathtaking depth of the city and are intrigued by the extraordinary and those with an intellectual inclination for understanding Rome will certainly find the volume enjoyable.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Rome Is Love Spelled Backward (Roma Amor): Enjoying Art and Architecture in the Eternal City
by Judith Testa
EEmperor Hadrian is credited for pairing the patron goddess, Roma, with the long-worshiped love deity, Venus, thus creating the palindrome Romamor, which gives this unusual and worthy guidebook its name. In five chronologically arranged sections (Ancient Rome, Early Christian and Medieval Rome, Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, Baroque Rome and Modern Rome), Northern Illinois University art history professor Testa covers the city's art and architecture with insight, sensitivity and scholarly perspective rarely found in travel manuals. Many chapters are devoted to a single monument: S. Maria Sopra Minerva, the Trevi Fountain, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Colosseum. Others are on larger themes, such as the building programs of Sixtus V or those of Mussolini. Everything is presented in welcome detail with background information for fuller understanding of the sites that surround a visitor to the Eternal City. Anyone interested in the classic arts will learn something from Testa's text, whether it's the reason the Pantheon was built, the source of the Christian and Jewish catacombs, or the roles that Caravaggio and Bernini played in creating a baroque Rome. With 50 photos, narrative text and no information on shops, restaurants, or hotels, it's a guidebook for sophisticated travelers who already know where to stay, but want more than a sentence on what they're seeing.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
In this informative new book, Frank Korn reveals long-preserved secrets of the Eternal City. Where else but in Rome will you find a church with the name "Where are you going?" Or be able to take an ancient lie detector test? Or peer through a single keyhole and see three sovereign countries in one shot? These are among the scores of fascinating oddities, offbeat features and unexplored places that Korn discusses. Learn about the cupolas of Rome, tracing back to the 6th century; discover the rioni fountains, which symbolize the interest or character of the neighborhood where they are located; or observe the pagan priest of the Vatican, a famous 1st-century marble sculpture. Korn reveals how tourists, while rushing through the "must-see" sights of the city, are missing treasures like these, steeped in just as much history but without the crowds. If you just don't have time to luxuriate in the bubble bath whirlpool tub of Georgina Masson's Companion Guide to Rome, then treat yourself to this book, the next best thing, which also details many one-day trips like Assisi, Palestrina, and Frascati.
(Click
here for price and order information)
In Rome, a traveler must quickly learn valuable lessons on how to assimilate
into Roman culture. Never purchase a hamster unless you are wholly committed to its care. Never drink a cappuccino
anytime after breakfast, unless you want to be recognized as a foreigner. Never wave at your Italian aerobics
instructor if you don't recognize the man she is kissing. And never, ever, eat the banana from a fruit bowl
arrangement. Saving Rome is a collection of stories about family, friends, second chances, rebirth and new
life -- all connected to the dramatic backdrop of Rome. Canadian Megam Williams, who maker her home there
with her Italian family, looks at it all from the perspective of both an insider and an outsider. (Click here
for price and order information)
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
A Thousand Bells at Noon: A Roman's Guide to the Secrets and Pleasures of
His Native City
An accomplished chef, restaurateur, and documentary filmmaker rediscovers the extraordinary delights of his native Rome after an extended, decades-long absence. Although standard travel guides focus on Rome's infinite number of prominent and offbeat tourist sights, Romagnoli concentrates on the people, the feelings, the shared history, and the unique culture that epitomizes a less tangible, far more tantalizing aspect of Rome. By contemplating and analyzing the city's human texture, he provides an insider's view into the central core of one of the world's urban treasures. While strolling through the districts and streets of his beloved Roma, he encounters and interviews countless natives willing to share their unique perspective on the Roman persona and lifestyle. Both the Rome of antiquity and the modern city are well represented in this distinctive tribute.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
A Catholic's Guide to Rome: Discovering the Soul of the Eternal City
The Catholic Advocate (Newark)
Library Journal
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Conroy's much-awaited novel details Jack McCall's search to understand the people and events that shaped his life in South Carolina and Rome. From Booklist: Conroy evolves from the Margaret Mitchell school of southern writing, where everything must be Big--the smartest, most beautiful people on the planet living the biggest lives on the grandest sets and, of course, wracked by the greatest tragedies. It's all here in the story of Jack McCall of Waterford, South Carolina, his five brothers, drunken father, white-trash mother, and Holocaust-surviving in-laws. Nothing small happens in this book: the McCalls' story is played out against World War II, Auschwitz, the sixties, and, of course, the South in all its triumph and tragedy. Even the little moments are big in their way: the best cup of cappuccino, the most beautiful southern evening, the freshest shrimp, the most precocious kid. And yet, sneer as we will, we also must admit that Conroy plays the high-concept game as well as anyone. Like Mitchell, he builds narrative momentum that is impossible to resist, and he writes with a hammy eloquence that, while often infuriating, fits his subject matter perfectly. You won't stop reading, but you'll hate yourself in the morning.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as for price and order information)
Thirty years ago, UPI political writer Joan Marble and her sculptor husband Robert Cook bought an unpromising piece of land north of Rome in the hamlet of Canale, home of the ancient Etruscans. Here they restored a house and, more importantly, started a garden that changed their lives. Despite the incredulity of local inhabitants and the seemingly endless problems they encountered, the couple's enthusiasm for the ancient countryside, their ignorance of the obstacles they faced, their downright stubbornness, and the unexpected friends who helped them all served to conquer the inhospitable terrain.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Set in A.D. 9 and based on an actual event in Roman history, this is the story of Glaxus Valtinius, a Senior Centurion who must confront betrayal and incompetence during his last duty station before he can return to Rome and pursue his destiny with the woman he loves. Powerful, emotional, and vivid in its presentation of turn-of-the-millennium life, Centurion is an unforgettable and highly recommended historical novel.
(Click here for price and order information)
Pilgrimage:
Soft cover
Here's one reader's review:
(Click here for price and order information)
The Seasons of Rome: A Journal
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town "If you live in Sutri for a hundred years, you won't have a friend; if you live in Sutri for five hundred years, you'll have a friend, but you'll regret it." So runs a proverb from the city in which Rips, a sometime attorney and full-time student of the good life, sets his narrative, a place that defies guidebook description and most of the rules of logic. There, a first-class idler in a town where no one is in much of a hurry, he encounters such figures as a diviner who heals sick tractors by touch; a Calabrian outsider who gauges people by the smell of their feet; a chef whose favorite dish is porcupine; and an illiterate postman, plus a bewildering array of secrets and strange encounters that test the innocence of our innocent abroad.
Tinged with the bittersweet, Rips's extraordinary memoir will please Italian and armchair travelers alike.
(Click here for an excerpt, as well as price and order information)
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling The temperament of the day was dictated by the politics of the papal court, a corrupt and powerful office steeped in controversy; Pope Julius II even had a nickname, "Il Papa Terrible," to prove it. Along with his violent outbursts and warmongering, Pope Julius II took upon himself to restore the Sistine Chapel and pretty much intimidated Michelangelo into painting the ceiling even though the artist considered himself primarily a sculptor and was particularly unfamiliar with the temperamental art of fresco. Along with technical difficulties, personality conflicts, and money troubles, Michelangelo was plagued by health problems and competition in the form of the dashing and talented young painter Raphael.
Author Ross King offers an in-depth analysis of the complex historical background that led to the magnificence that is the Sistine Chapel ceiling along with detailed discussion of some of the ceiling's panels. King provides fabulous tidbits of information and weaves together a fascinating historical tale.
(Click here for price and order information)
From Library Journal: English writer Iggulden's first novel is the story of two young boys-Gaius and Marcus, raised as brothers though one is illegitimate-as they grow to adulthood in Rome two millennia ago. At that time, the republic was beginning to fall apart, a collapse that would result in the civil wars that brought the emperors to power. It was a time of turmoil, chaos, revolutions, casual violence, and savage brutality, and Iggulden's descriptions of the culture and environment are vivid. Although covering a period unknown to most lay readers, Emperor is a surprisingly fast and often exciting read.
(Click here for price and order information)
In 1981, Marguerite Yourcenar became the first woman to be elected to the prestigious French Academy, a measure of the extraordinary place she holds in the history of French letters. This historical novel, unique in its approach to a figure from Roman history, creates a vivid and historically accurate portrait of the 2nd-century Roman Empire under Hadrian's rule. The work is a fictional first-person narrative in the form of Hadrian's letters--mostly to his nephew Marcus Aurelius--written shortly before his death. Contemplative and analytical recollections of his accomplishments, his hopes for Rome, and his personal relationships, the letters reveal Hadrian to be a highly intelligent, often wise man, conscious of the great power he wields.
(Click here for price and order information)
This novella is set in Rome in 1933, the eleventh year of the Fascist dictatorship in Italy. There, during the space of a day, a ten-lire coin passes through the hands of nine people - including an old artist, a prostitute, and a would-be assassin of Mussolini - and becomes the symbol of contact between human beings, each lost in his own passions and in his intrinsic solitude.
(Click here for price and order information)
"Perhaps the finest book ever to be written about a city." "These essays gather up Rome and hold it before us, bristling and dense and dreamlike, with every scene drenched in the sound of fountains, of leaping and falling water." "With her genius for attention, observation and recordings, she sees with beautiful accuracy the differences between things. With a true sense and love for the grand, the tragic, the beautiful, she has the necessary sense of their opposites... This whole book is the distillation of a deep personal experience; it is autobiography in the truest sense...the story of the search for what is truly one's own, and the ability to recognize it when found, and to be faithful in love of it."
(Click here for price and order information)
Regarding The Borgo Pio is a wonderful book that recently came to our attention. It's the kind of in-depth study of a neighborhood that will fascinate anyone who loves Rome.
The Montesi Scandal: The Death of Wilma Montesi and the Birth of the Paparazzi in Fellini's Rome
by Karen Pinkus
by G. Franco Romagnoli
by Frank J. Korn
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief, First Things
Those on their very first visit will be grateful for this splendid guide.
This is a book for those who have been there, and those who would like to be!
It provides the religious pilgrim with contemporary details and historical traditions surrounding the important churches and shrines of the city.
Notes from an Italian Garden 
by Joan Marble
Centurion: A Novel of Ancient Rome
by Peter W. Mitsopoulos
A Chronicle of Christianity Through the Churches of Rome
by June Hager
170 magnificent color photographs by Grzegorz Galazka
Rome is famous as the capital of Christianity and the "city of a thousand churches." With a fresh perspective on the history of the Roman Catholic church recounted for the millennial jubilee, visit forty sacred buildings, from the ancient catacombs to the most recent churches raised in the sprawling suburbs, and become swept up in the stories of each one: S. Stefano Rotondo, built to honor Christianity's first martyr, has close and mysterious associations to Christ's own tomb in Jerusalem; S. Maria Sopra Minerva is filled with art treasures and the ghosts of protagonists from medieval Rome; S. Andrea al Quirinale, with its oval shape, theatrical altar, and splendid dome, epitomizes the Baroque at its height. End with the origins of jubilees and the churches dedicated to them. Plus
an introduction by Pope John Paul II's chosen deputy for the Great Jubilee.
"All of you, whether you can get to Rome for the Giubileo next year or not, should have this book. Everyone who can come to Rome in 2000 should get a copy now and start studying it. I read through "Pilgrimage" immediately on its delivery and started my second reading, after a short night's sleep, a few hours later. Walking, book in hand, I revisited Il Gesu and S. Maria Sopra Minerva near the Pantheon with new understanding and seeing with new eyes. Those of us who are lucky enough to live in Rome have visited many churches, but most of us have seen only their surfaces. What a pleasure it was (and will continue to be) to visit them again and really know what we are seeing.
There are not enough superlatives for this book. It is definitely not another grim guide that tells which statue is where and who's in every sarcophagus. Here we get clear and careful analysis -- how and why the churches were built and then restored and redecorated, what they meant to their Catholic communities, and some clues about what they can mean to us. The text is accurate and insightful and to say that the photos are sumptuous would be a vast understatement.
We've been waiting for years for this book. There is no other with which to compare it, but how wonderful that the first of its kind is a masterpiece."
by Paul Hofmann
Delightful insights into the Eternal City. Fleeing Hitler's invasion and arriving in Rome from his native Vienna in 1938, Hofmann made Italy his home for the rest of his life. Former bureau chief for the New York Times, he is a prolific travel writer, best known to Italianists as the author of Rome: The Sweet Tempestuous Life (1982), O Vatican (1983), Cento Città (1988), and That Fine Italian Hand (1990). Like these previous works, The Seasons of Rome is a light, breezy account of a year in that bewildering, beguiling, and often exasperating city. Like most travel literature--and like the Romans themselves--Hofmann's book refuses to take itself too seriously, and therein lies its charm. At times he sounds like the neighborhood curmudgeon, complaining about left-wing students, motorscooters, and the Democratic Party of the Left (the former Communist Party). Tellingly, Hofmann confesses that he does not consider himself a Roman by adoption- -even after more than half a century in the city. Rather, he is "still a foreign observer with my inevitable prejudices. . . ." But it's precisely this distance that allows him to reveal the foibles, folly, and even nobility of that ancient/modern Roman race. Each chapter is devoted to a month of the year, and we realize how intimately tied the Romans are to their climate, whether the wind that dumps sand from the Sahara on their city or the late summer rains that bring relief from the heat. Above all else, the author reveals how the Romans define the Italian arte di arrangiarsi, or the art of getting by; from avoiding paying their utility bills to dealing with local politics. The next best thing to actually being in Rome.
by Michael Rips
In this lively book, an American expatriate tries to make a new home in a small Italian city famous for its clannish ways. He succeeds in many ways, but not without plenty of gaffes and cultural misinterpretations--all of which make Michael Rips's memoir that much funnier.
by Ross King
Almost 500 years after Michelangelo Buonarroti frescoed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the site still attracts throngs of visitors and is considered one of the artistic masterpieces of the world. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling unveils the story behind the art's making, a story rife with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera.
Emperor: The Gates of Rome
by Conn Iggulden
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
A Coin in Nine Hands
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Rome and a Villa
by Eleanor Clark
- New York Times
- The New Yorker
- Katherine Anne Porter
Saving Rome