2 - “Noble Edifices”: The Urban Image of Papal Rome, 1417—1667

Summary

Abstract

Through a survey of important buildings and urbanistic forces in Rome, this chapter considers to what extent and in what ways a city is a necessary tool for gaining, retaining, and using political power. In the wake of demographic changes in Europe and urban growth in the Po River valley in the late Middle Ages, Rome emerged as a new center of political power with the revival of the papacy after Avignon. The city was in poor material condition following the fourteenth century, and there was a need to restore urban functionality, but also to shape it into a site consistent visually and symbolically with its role being a major European capital. Early modern popes dedicated themselves to rehabilitating Rome, and the success and failures of papal performative architecture and urbanism demonstrate the links between political power and urbanism.

Keywords: Rome; papacy; architecture; urban history

Noble edifices combining taste and beauty with imposing proportions would immensely conduce to the exaltation of the chair of St Peter.

This chapter discusses the urban image of papal Rome from 1417 to 1667, a 250-year period bound by the elevation of Pope Martin V to the Throne of St. Peter, which ended the Great Western Schism and ultimately led to the return of the papal court to Rome after the Avignon Papacy; and the death of Pope Alexander VII Chigi, after which papal coffers were left empty and the flood of building campaigns of the previous two and a half centuries dwindled to a trickle. Through this period dozens of popes spent millions of scudi to erect thousands of buildings, all in an effort to establish the papacy as both a dominant political entity in Europe as well as the unchallenged religious authority across the continent. Rome was facing a number of urban challenges: it neither appeared beautiful nor functioned well, and it lacked the basic urban elements of peer cities. Throughout the early modern period, Rome’s elite dreamt of a new city. To that end, they built churches, palaces, monuments, streets, and fountains in order to promote the papacy, glorify noble families, and restore functionality and grandeur to the Eternal City.