Ancient Rome in Fifty Monuments

A sweeping new history of the city of Rome, told through its emperors and the monuments they built to make their mark on one of the great capitals of the classical world.

‘What is worse than Nero? What is better than Nero’s Baths?’ – so wrote the poet Martial in the first century AD, demonstrating the power that buildings have on public consciousness. In ancient Rome, who built a monument and why mattered as much as its physical structure. Over centuries and under many different emperors, a small village in Italy was transformed into the crowning glory of an empire. Seeking out the personalities behind the great building projects is key to understanding them.

With this firmly in mind, Paul Roberts takes the reader on a tour of ancient Rome, vividly evoking the sights and sounds of the city: from the roar of the crowds at the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, to the dazzling gleam of the marble- and mosaic-covered baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. He tells this story emperor by emperor, drawing out the political, social and cultural backdrop to the monuments and ultimately the very human motivations that gave rise to their construction – and destruction. These fascinating buildings are further brought to life with reconstructions that show how the ancients themselves would have experienced them.

When and why were these monuments built? What did they add to the lives of the people who used them? What impact did they have on the shape of the city? Roberts expertly weaves together the latest archaeological research with social and cultural history, to tell the story of the Eternal City, always in some way rising, falling and being rebuilt.

About the Author

Dr Paul Roberts was Sackler Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford. He has curated numerous popular exhibitions, including ‘Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum’ at the British Museum in 2013 and ‘Last Supper in Pompeii’ at the Ashmolean in 2019–20. He wrote the accompanying exhibition catalogues to both. A trained archaeologist, Paul has been involved in various fieldwork projects across Italy and Greece.