Roma moderna
| Author | Italo Insolera, Paolo Berdini (collaborator) |
|---|---|
| Original title | Roma moderna. Da Napoleone I al XXI secolo |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Series | Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi |
| Subject | Urban History |
| Published | 2011 by Einaudi |
| Pages | 403 |
| ISBN | 978-88-06-20876-9 |
Roma moderna. Un secolo di storia urbanistica, in English Modern Rome. A Century of Urban History is a book by architect and historian Italo Insolera about Rome’s urban history from 1870. First published in 1962, it was re-published in several subsequent editions and revisions until 2011, only one year before the author's passing.
Locating the origins of “modern” Rome in the last years of papal government and the subsequent establishment of Rome as the national capital of the newly unified Italy, this book covers the—contradictory, in Insolera's opinion— architectural achievements of the late 19th century, the difficult years post-WW I, the urban policy of the Fascist period, regarded as absurd by Insolera, the cultural revival and optimism following WW II, and what Insolera views as the alarming and still relevant developments of the late decades of the 20th century.
With this scope, the book reconstructs the fascinating, complex and difficult history of a city that endlessly seeks—and never seems to find according to Insolera—a planned definition of its own urban aspect.
Five decades after it was first published, Modern Rome has been re-issued in a new revised and expanded edition, bearing the new title Roma moderna. Da Napoleone I al XXI secolo (Modern Rome. From Napoleon I to 21st Century). Spanning two centuries rather than one, Insolera shifts the birth of “modern” Rome to 1811, when Napoleon I signed what he considers the first modern laws in Rome’s history, and extends his analysis of Rome’s urban development up to 2011.
Main Editions
- Italo Insolera, Roma moderna : un secolo di storia urbanistica (Modern Rome. A Century of Urban History), Torino, Series "Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi", Einaudi, 279 pages, 20 chapters, 1962.
- Italo Insolera, Roma moderna. Un secolo di storia urbanistica. 1870-1970 (Modern Rome. A Century of Urban History. 1870-1970), Torino, Series "Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi", Einaudi, 345 pages, 24 chapters, 2001 ISBN 88-06-15931-3.
- Italo Insolera, Paolo Berdini (collaboration), Roma moderna. Da Napoleone I al XXI secolo (Modern Rome. From Napoleon I to 21st Century), Torino, Series "Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi", Einaudi, 403 pages, 30 chapters, 2011 ISBN 978-88-06-20876-9.