Customer Reviews

The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome

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If you have ever wondered what happened to transform the stupendous marble temples, palaces and baths of Imperial Rome into the fragmentary ruins we see today, read Lanciani. A famous archaeologist, he takes the reader on a learned tour of most of the great and some of the virtually unknown sites of the ancient city and lets us know how emperors, popes, renaissance architects and modern speculators reduced them to their present state . While some of his information is no longer completely accurate due to more recent discoveries and scholarship, nonetheless, his first hand experience of the excavations and his extraordinary knowledge of the history of the city and its monuments make this essential reading for the enthusiastic tourist as well as the student. His descriptions of the many imperial gardens are fascinating and unavailable elsewhere. The volume has murky plates and illustrations, although many readers will not mind this; there are plenty of photos available in other books. One thing that most readers will miss is a map of the city showing the sites the author describes. Highly recommended.

For decades Rodolfo Lanciani studied and excavated the ruins of ancient Rome during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. He wrote this book (he tells us) not as a book on archaeology but as a guidebook for the student of history and archaeology visiting the city. He walks you around from site to site in the city as it existed then. However, he is an archaeologist, and his knowledge of the city, its history and its remains is encyclopaedic. He discourses on everything from the many styles of bricks, and how they are laid, to the design of the systems of aquaducts, to excavation of Nero's golden house, other palaces of other Emperors, ordinary houses, places of worship, to the discovery of the remains of Raphael in the Pantheon, which gatekeepers must be bribed to allow entrance to certain sites, interesting historical anecdodes and on and on and on. There are over 200 illustrations, maps and plans. Lanciani also published a reconstruction of the ancient city map of Rome, known as the "Forma Urbis Romae", so he knew the city of 2000 years ago street by street and house by house.
Dr Lanciani is writing over a hundred years ago, and the power of his prose is staggering - crystal-clear technical discussions combined with 19th Century Romantic English are both enlightening and entertaining.
You will read of early excavations beginning in the Renaissance, beginning with the discovery of Nero's house and the rooms full of statuary that inspired artists of that time, to contemporary discoveries under the direction of Dr Lanciani.
One of my all-time favorites - I always keep it nearby and never tire of reading it.