Hannah Im | Discussion Post 2
Rome is well known for its staunch opposition to Christianity at one point in history. The Romans were well known for their large Empire, noble nature, and advanced technology. Because of these preconceptions, it is difficult to peel back the layers and realize Rome was also a city of foreigners, seasonal workers, and immigrants. Reading Fosi’s “The Plural City: Urban Spaces and Foreign Communities” revealed to me how beyond Rome’s initial facade, the city was driven by a diverse set of agents. Laurie Nussdorfer in “The Politics of Early Modern Rome” posits
Urban space displayed, publicized, concealed, dominated, excluded, separated, trapped, and protected.
Nussdorfer 184
While Roman officials and the papacy built the city to exert their power as Roma Caput Mundi, the folding over and messiness of the physical space reflect a Rome that was not truly under the papacy’s control. During our visit to the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, we were shown how the papal processional routes were mapped using three-dimensional modeling through the game machine Unity. The city was planned around the needs of the papacy, but the 3D modeling also reveals an underlying countermovement.
Getting to “be” in the city at the time of Falda’s Rome supported Nussdorfer and Fosi’s points about how the urban space was used by official powers and a heterogeneous population (Fosi 169). Students of Baroque Rome can see first-hand what this so-called urban space looks and feels like. This project, as with the other 3D modeling projects we explored today, are valuable in linking ideas together and connecting us to the past.
Citations
Fosi, Irene. “Chapter 9 The Plural City: Urban Spaces and Foreign Communities”. In A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492–1692, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019).
Nussdorfer, Laurie. “The Politics of Space in Early Rome.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 42 (1997): 161–86.