Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the death
of the "engineering pope" Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome was
transformed by intense activity involving building construction and
engineering projects of all kinds. Using hundreds of archival documents
and primary sources, Engineering the Eternal City explores the
processes and people involved in these infrastructure projects--sewers,
bridge repair, flood prevention, aqueduct construction, the building of
new, straight streets, and even the relocation of immensely heavy
ancient Egyptian obelisks that Roman emperors had carried to the city
centuries before.
This portrait of an early modern Rome examines the many conflicts,
failures, and successes that shaped the city, as decision-makers tried
to control not only Rome's structures and infrastructures but also the
people who lived there. Taking up visual images of the city created
during the same period--most importantly in maps and urban
representations, this book shows how in a time before the development of
modern professionalism and modern bureaucracies, there was far more
wide-ranging conversation among people of various backgrounds on issues
of engineering and infrastructure than there is in our own times.
Physicians, civic leaders, jurists, cardinals, popes, and clerics
engaged with painters, sculptors, architects, printers, and other
practitioners as they discussed, argued, and completed the projects that
remade Rome.
