Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History

By Robert Hughes

From Robert Hughes, one of the greatest art and cultural critics of our time, comes a sprawling, comprehensive, and deeply personal history of Rome—as city, as empire, and, crucially, as an origin of Western art and civilization, two subjects about which Hughes has spent his life writing and thinking.

Starting on a personal note, Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a hungry twenty-one-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. From that exhilarating portrait, he takes us back more than two thousand years to the city's foundation, one mired in mythologies and superstitions that would inform Rome's development for centuries.

From the beginning, Rome was a hotbed of power, overweening ambition, desire, political genius, and corruption. Hughes details the turbulent years that saw the formation of empire and the establishment of the sociopolitical system, along the way providing colorful portraits of all the major figures, both political (Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula) and cultural (Cicero, Martial, Virgil), to name just a few. For almost a thousand years, Rome would remain the most politically important, richest, and largest city in the Western world.

From the formation of empire, Hughes moves on to the rise of early Christianity, his own antipathy toward religion providing rich and lively context for the brutality of the early Church, and eventually the Crusades. The brutality had the desired effect—the Church consolidated and outlasted the power of empire, and Rome would be the capital of the Papal States until its annexation into the newly united kingdom of Italy in 1870.

As one would expect, Hughes lavishes plenty of critical attention on the Renaissance, providing a full survey of the architecture, painting, and sculpture that blossomed in Rome over the course of the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, and shedding new light on old masters in the process. Having established itself as the artistic and spiritual center of the world, Rome in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries saw artists (and, eventually, wealthy tourists) from all over Europe converging on the bustling city, even while it was caught up in the nationalistic turmoils of the Italian independence struggle and war against France.

Hughes keeps the momentum going right into the twentieth century, when Rome witnessed the rise and fall of Italian Fascism and Mussolini, and took on yet another identity in the postwar years as the fashionable city of "La Dolce Vita." This is the Rome Hughes himself first encountered, and it's one he contends, perhaps controversially, has been lost in the half century since, as the cult of mass tourism has slowly ruined the dazzling city he loved so much. Equal parts idolizing, blasphemous, outraged, and awestruck, Rome is a portrait of the Eternal City as only Robert Hughes could paint it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307700582

Reviews for Rome

[drmaf-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I first saw this book I grabbed it eagerly, expecting a great read, because of my passion for Ancient Rome and Hughes' reputation as an outstanding writer. What I got was a rambling discourse on Roman history, interspersed with references to various works of art. It was chaotic, disorganised, frequently turned back on itself and sometimes seemed simply to lose complete track of where it was supposed to be. There were also some shocking errors of fact (shocking to me certainly, with my PhD in ancient Rome studies, but noticeable I think to to anyone with an adequate knowledge of Roman history). The whole thing appeared to have been poorly tought out, poorly put together, and poorly proof-read. It was a major disappointment. I had hoped it would be a significant addition to my library.. Instead I read about half of it, returned it to my local library, and went hurriedly back to re-read The Shock of the New to remind myself how great a writer Hughes actually was.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a sweeping, searing history of the Eternal City, giving a grand tour of the city, immersed in history.

This history is primarily focused on the art and culture of the city, offering cutting remarks on the political side of things. With such eminent leaders as Berlusconi, who could blame him for being dismissive?

The only flaw I could notice was that the book needed even more pictures - but that isn't so bad - Google the relevant art works and you should follow Hughes' whirlwind tour of the city just fine.

The book ends with a warning on cultural decay and overcrowding of the city, but there is the hope that this city will somehow survive, shambling onwards, despite everything.

[jrcovey_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading Robert Hughes’ final book is a bit like contemporary Rome itself: majestic, impressive, memorable, and cringeworthy by turns. One quality of Rome that Hughes does not share, however, is confusion. Reading Hughes is always illuminating, even when I strenuously disagree.I kept a few notes as I read the book, and I found that they filled up with lists of paintings, sculptures and buildings that I would hope to see on a future visit (now illuminated with Hughes’ insights); memorable quotes that I wanted to be able to refer back to (e.g. in comparison to Catholicism “Christian fundamentalists have no sacred art to show, no writing of aesthetic significance, and little architecture beyond drive-in megachurches”); and points on which I disagree or was even offended (e.g. Bernini’s Pluto and Persephone is “an extremely sexy sculpture, and should be, since its subject is a rape”).I will say that as much as I might disagree with him on certain points, I respect the fact that Hughes had done his homework before he wrote. On every point of historical debate he clearly familiarized himself with the main arguments, and has generally made a definitive judgment about where he stands. He is not simply coasting on time spent in the city. The Newsweek pull-quote in the edition I bought describes his brain as a “hard-structured, brightly lit, and capacious expanse”—that pretty much nails it.I started reading this book shortly before my first trip to Rome, and I will say that, vivid as it is, I did find myself much more engaged by the remainder of the book after I returned—something about being able to picture relative locations and dimensions made the book really come to life for me. I hope to return to Rome someday, and before I do I believe I will return to this book.

[freelancer_frank · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book about the history and art history of Rome. It is a good introduction, but probably not for those already in the know. There is a lot of ground to cover and the joins, sometimes, creak a little, as Hughes jumps from the Roman era to the papacy to the Grand Tour. He is, however, a highly entertaining writer. He can tackle the grand sweep and sprinkle that with nuggets of original information, ideas and commentary. He closes with a highly amusing and poignant rant that somehow caps the work in a very Roman fashion.

[jacoombs_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An idiosyncratic history, cultural and political, of Rome at its strongest in describing the history of the visual arts in Rome.