The Hills of Rome
Signature of an Eternal City

This book explores the cliché of 'the city of seven hills' and how, since antiquity, it has shaped experience of the city.

Caroline Vout (Author)

9781107025974, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 September 2012

320 pages, 72 b/w illus. 27 colour illus. 1 map
25.3 x 18 x 1.9 cm, 0.81 kg

'The ambitious topic treated in this book is very well chosen and has a lot to offer. This book does a great deal in illuminating some aspects of the 'seven hills' concept and will prove useful for many advanced students of Rome …' Raphael Hunsucker, Mnemosyne

Rome is 'the city of seven hills'. This book examines the need for the 'seven hills' cliché, its origins, development, impact and borrowing. It explores how the cliché relates to Rome's real volcanic terrain and how it is fundamental to how we define this. Its chronological remit is capacious: Varro, Virgil and Claudian at one end, on, through the work of Renaissance antiquarians, to embrace frescoes and nineteenth-century engravings. These artists and authors celebrated the hills and the views from these hills, in an attempt to capture Rome holistically. By studying their efforts, this book confronts the problems of encapsulating Rome and 'cityness' more broadly and indeed the artificiality of any representation, whether a painting, poem or map. In this sense, it is not a history of the city at any one moment in time, but a history of how the city has been, and has to be, perceived.

1. Introduction: the journey to Rome
2. The lie of the land
3. Seven is the magic number
4. Rome, la città eterna
5. Painting by numbers
6. On top of the world
7. Signing off.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], European history [HBJD], Landscape art & architecture [AMV], Mosaics: artworks [AFPM], Art & design styles: Classicism [ACQH]