‘Rome appears like a floating city, disconnected from and impervious to the outside world.’ Jessica Maier's description of Antonio Tempesta's (1555–1630) pictorial map of Rome in her contribution to this volume could equally refer to conceptions of the city cultivated and deployed by its papal princes, civic governors, élites and artists. As the editors of this volume emphasise, early modern Rome was both a place and an idea: Roma Sancta, Theatrum Mundi, capital of the Respublica Christiana. Even the government of the early modern city was not a mere pragmatic fact but a dual authority that rested on the legacy of the Galilean fisherman appointed by Christ himself and the prestige of an empire, long gone but lately idealised by the patrons and protagonists of the Italian Renaissance. The fabric of the city itself was pregnant with ideas, saturated with stories, histories and monuments built on the blood and bones of martyrs. This volume comprises the most up-to-date research on this topic in thirty specialist contributions, exploring Rome from a range of angles, as both an early modern city and a unique, compelling idea.

The idea of Rome has been a lure for scholars throughout the ages, from sixteenth-century historians such as Onofrio Panvinio (1529–68) to those writing in the present volume. And yet that very same idea can cloud our vision of the city and its significance, whether conceived as eternal ideal or a lamentable caricature of stagnation and corruption. The illumination of Rome as both an idea and a multi-faceted, changing city is the supreme achievement of this volume, which has chapters on subjects from scientific knowledge to strangers and sounds, as well as critical discussions about how and why ideas of Rome were shaped and used in the period. Indeed, chapters by Simon Ditchfield and Margaret Kuntz highlight the intense activity behind the cultivation of Roman Catholicism as a global idea and ‘collective enterprise’ (p. 147). This idea not only permeated liturgy, sanctity and art in the city but, seeking to ‘collapse space and time’ (p. 2), also shaped religious belief and practice from Mexico to Macau. The idea of Rome even had political potency. Toby Osborne's chapter on diplomacy reveals that early modern Rome remained a crucial diplomatic hub, despite the challenges and aftermath of the Reformation. For the city's diplomatic spaces and ceremonies were not only rich in symbolism, but often had a measurable impact, creating precedent with influence well beyond the city walls.

Contributions to the volume also highlight how the city's authorities and ideals were engaged with particular, flawed realities, from syphilitics to sackings and sewerage. The city was demanding, reactive and creative; chapters on economy, infrastructure, liturgy and charity confound any conception of Rome as a mere stagnant, reactionary, consumer. Even the most entrenched, universalising forces of religious morality and symbolism sparked innovation, growth and resistance. The celebrations for the Holy Year of 1575 saw numbers of pilgrims swell from around 30,000 to 400,000. Whilst individuals in Rome's Jewish community subverted the imposition of norms, breaking laws to tend to Christian invalids and stuffing their ears with wax to block out the preachers who sought to convert them. Even Pope Paul iv, generally characterised as a reactionary, developed the ceremonies, sites and institutions of the city in response to external challenges and critiques. In this Rome, ‘disagreements, competition and injuries were deep-seated social processes, not anomalies or violations that could be eradicated’ (p. 115). In early modern Rome, critiques and challenges could shape the city just as the grand universalising ideas that were often used to elide them.

The thoughtful arrangement of the chapters into four thematic sections with cross references across contributions allows readers to draw out links within the sections and volume as a whole, looking at the city in three dimensions. Confraternities and hospitals are places of charity, patrons of art and science, diplomatic settings, and a means of cultivating identity. Even individuals emerge in various guises. The ‘Second Apostle of Rome’, Filippo Neri, appears as a global saint, the founder of a Roman pilgrimage, an object of anatomical experimentation and a figurehead of sacred archaeology. The physical fabric of Rome also permeates chapters well beyond those focused on architecture and infrastructure, revealing not only the symbolism but the lived experience of the city, with activities sacred and mundane and the accompanying cacophony of sounds. As the editors admit, much history ‘from above’ is necessary to understand the overarching forces that shaped the city. Yet even chapters on subjects that might normally be focused on only central institutions, such as civic government and identity, discuss agents at the lowest rungs of Roman society, like the city's militia. This approach illuminates Rome's character as a ‘polycentric’ and unusually ‘labile’ city (p. 116) in legal, political and social terms. Both papal and civic laws sought to dictate the status and lives of foreigners in the city, for example, but Irene Fosi's contribution shows us that integration could depend more on custom, occupation and religious confession.

Like the choice of the term ‘early modern’, the time-frame covered by the book had to be sufficiently inclusive to accommodate its specialist yet panoramic approach. The expulsion of the Jews and Moriscos from Spain and the discovery of the New World in 1492 are a fitting point of departure to explore a city in flux, facing new challenges and opportunities. The end point is two hundred years later, when chances for social movement narrowed with a law clamping down on the papal nepotism that had fuelled the rise of so many individuals and families. This change reflects a crucial tension conveyed throughout the volume: between the significant and very tangible effect of the idea of Rome, and the practical reality of sustaining the city, its institutions and its people. In early modern Rome, the ideal and the practical were often indivisible. Even the provision of grain and water was imbued with symbolic significance. By offering such a diverse and carefully curated collection of vedute on this unique city, this volume makes an unparalleled contribution to our understanding of early modern Rome as both an powerful idea and a dynamic, multivalent reality.