CITY OF ECHOES

Sub-titled ' New History of Rome, Its Popes and Its People', this is a rather timely acquisition given that we now have a new Pope and the focus has recently been very much on Rome and its traditions. Here is a brilliant new history of the city told through the lens of its popes. In Rome the echoes of the past resound clearly in its palaces and monuments, and in the remains of the ancient imperial city. But another presence has dominated Rome for 2,000 years - the pope, whose actions and influence echo down the ages. Here historian Jessica Wärnberg illuminates how these remarkable (and unremarkable) men have transformed lives and played a crucial role in deciding the fate of the city. She is an assured guide through the panorama of Rome's Christian history evoking a turbulent world of warfare, witchcraft and inquisitors and she makes church history fun. Here is Rome in all its beauty, depravity and resilience explaining papal power and reshaping our perceptions of how the modern Vatican came to be. The account of the early Christian martyrs and first popes is especially interesting. Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, less than 300 years later the Pope sat enthroned in a gilt basilica, endorsed by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors, becoming the de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world. Shifting elegantly between the panoramic and the personal, the spiritual and the profane, this is a fresh and often surprising take on a city, a people and an institution, the machinations of the Catholic church and the vast history of the Christian message. 442pp with illustrations and 16 pages of colour images.