Customer Reviews

Ancient Rome: A Guide to the Glory of Imperial Rome (Sightseekers)

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This is a nice little conceit behind "Ancient Rome: A Guide to the Glory of Imperial Rome," which has been put together as a Sightseers' guide to Rome in the time of Hadrian. Jonathan Stroud provides the young "traveler" visiting Rome with advice on what to wear (tunics instead of togas, and the emperor has made wearing a beard fashionable), what to eat (soup, sausages, pastries), where to shop (Trajan's Market near the Forum), and where to stay (tenement buildings unless you are rich).

Of course the main part of the guide is going to be devoted to things to do when in Rome and the highlights include a visit to the public baths, the theater, and the temples, but the top attractions are the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum. The final pages of the guide tell you what you can find farther a field around Rome and a survival guide on what you need to know to stay on the good side of the Romans. Inside the back cover there is a pullout map of Rome, and while it does not have street names so you can find your way around the Eternal City, it will show you where you can find the major sights including all of the aforementioned places, the Imperial Palace, the Pantheon, Trajan's Column, and the Camp of the Praetorian Guard.

This book for young students is nowhere as thick as a real guide book because, after all, those who read this guide are not really going to visit ancient Rome and because only somebody like me would have the patience to go through a 100-page travel guide to the past. The guide is illustrated mostly with colored drawings, although there are a few photographs of Roman artifacts. The back of the book includes a "Souvenir quiz," a little reminder that this guide is supposed to be educational, and an index.

The choice of Hadrian's Rome, as opposed to that of Augustus, Nero, or any other emperor, is mandated by the simple fact that was a point a which all of the key sights to see (and which you can still see in various stages of repair) had been built. Other volumes in the Sightseers series look at Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Shakespeare's London, Paris 1789, and the California Gold Rush, although I would think that those that focus on a particular city as opposed to an entire country, would work better in this format.