I have always been fascinated by circular buildings. The Pantheon and Santa Costanza in Rome, the tholos at Delphi. One of my especial favourites is the little-visited Santo Stefano Rotondo, on the slopes of Rome’s Caelian Hill. Below is an extract from the Blue Guide travel monograph Pilgrim’s Rome: Santo Stefano…
Mural of a bird-filled garden from the triclinium of the Villa of Livia (wife of Augustus). In the Museo Nazionale in Palazzo Massimo, near the Baths of Diocletian, Rome.
A guide to Rome’s Christian monuments, explained and put into context by an examination of the history of pilgrimage, from its most ancient forms to more modern, even secular practice. View the book’s contents, index and some sample pages, and buy securely from blueguides.com here »
I began this quirky, genre-defying book one sunny May morning and by the time I had got halfway through it, I was really enjoying myself. I had had no idea what to expect but was prepared for either a fatuous trawl through Rome’s “eateries” or for rapturous gushing about dining all’italiana…
Santa Maria Antiqua, the oldest church in the Forum, is at last due to reopen after extensive repairs and restorations. It houses some exceptional wall-paintings. See the following review in the New York Times.
‘Archaeology often brings to light relics—mysterious foundations, tumbled blocks, a charred sacrificial pit, the decaying stumps of dead houses—fascinating to the scholar but a stunning bore to the simple visitor.’ So wrote Dilys Powell in The Villa Ariadne. Archaeologists can be monomaniacs and their interests are often distressingly narrow. So it…
I first arrived in Rome in January 1966 when I was eighteen. I had had a long journey by train from London but I have never forgotten the emotional impact as my taxi sped by the Forum. All the hours I had spent trying to construe the speeches of Cicero…
In Istanbul, on the north side of Divan Yolu, the street that follows the course of the Mese or ‘Central Way’ of old Constantinople, stands a decayed porphyry stump known as Çemberlitaş, the ‘Hooped Column’. In its heyday it would have been much more splendid, for it was, according to Blue…
Entertaining anthologies of writing–extracts from novels, letter, diaries, poems, histories, guide books–about or set in the destination. Lively introductions to each excerpt make them a pleasure to browse, a mine of fascinating insights to enjoy at home or to supplement a guide book on site. Buy the books from blueguides.com…
Ostia is spectacular, the picturesque remains of a working port town cover an enormous area of red-brick and marble ruins on the banks of the (now scarcely visible) river Tiber. It gives much more of a feel for life in the Roman empire than yet another nutty emperor’s palace. (Not…
The first in the new Blue Guide Concise city series: small format and good value, ideal for on-site use. Blue Guide Concise Rome builds on Blue Guides’ exhaustive coverage of Italy and its cities. View the book’s contents, index and some sample pages, and buy securely from blueguides.com here »
Unlike the Blue Guides to Florence and Venice, Blue Guide Rome does not include a list of recommended reading. Blue Guide Literary Companion Rome is due out Dec 2010, a sister volume to the Blue Guide Literary Companion Venice, to be joined by London in Spring 2011. In any case…
