Rome and a Villa

Even though the last time Clark visited Rome the year was 1974, you cannot help but daydream of traveling to Rome when you read Rome and a Villa. I started a mental checklist of everything I hoped to see, should I get there myself: the 124 steps of Santa Mana Aracoeli beside the Campidoglio, feral cats scattering in the rain, the Piazza Vittorio, the famous Trevi Fountain which was funded with a second tax on wine, and capable of moving 80,000 cubic meters of water per day.
Clark even opened my eyes to the Roman influences here in the United States: Penn Station in New York City; how it was designed with the Baths of Caracalle in mind.
Beyond architecture and tourist draws, Clark paints pictures of influential individuals like Julius show more Caesar and Hadrian. She meanders with her narrative and is sometimes difficult to follow, but worth it if you can stick with her. show less

This is a famous book, well-reviewed when it came out, still highly recommended back when I was in college. It has marinated on my shelves for quite a while. And now, a great disappointment. Clark writes in a random, stream-of-consciousness, frequently run-on sentence style that I find quite off-putting. She often tends toward the epigrammatic (think Martial, but all of the epigram, none of the humanity). Sometimes she devolves into mere catalogs, e.g., for the fountains and palaces of Rome. These can grow quite tedious. She can be a judgmental Yankee. Sometimes she is lacking in aesthetics of language: Cesare Borgia is called Caesar Borgia; just doesn't sound right. Sometimes the problem is as simple as wordy descriptions of buildings show more or works of art where a picture would be better. I mostly just skimmed the last part of the book.

Clark covers Rome of all periods. "Roman Journal I" covers mostly ancient remains, II mostly Renaissance with a nod to the early Christian. One whole chapter, "Salvatore Giuliano," is devoted to a Sicilian bandit who had nothing to do with Rome or the Villa. The long chapter on Hadrian's Villa has its moments (a few), but is mostly a nastygram on Hadrian himself. "Beside the Pyramid," an addition to later editions, is largely about the English in Rome, particularly Keats and Shelley. The final chapter, is devoted to the Roman poet G.G. Belli. At least that brought back fond memories of a college Latin professor, the late and wonderful Carl Trahman, who would quote stretches of Belli in his course on Roman satire.

I gave this three stars more because of its reputation than my enjoyment. It may be the sort of thing you like, if you like that sort of thing. show less

quite boring. no pictures of what she was talking about. no maps to show us where she was. thought many times of not finishing. but parts were interesting.

Edition: // Descr: 303 p. : ill. 18.5 cm. // Series: Call No. { 947 C54 } Drawings by Eugene Berman. // //