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• Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome by Pamela O. Long
• Bert Hall (bio)

Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome By Pamela O. Long. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 368.

Considered simply as a city, much of Rome more closely resembles Washington, DC, than it does, say, New York or Hamburg. Unlike the latter cities, Rome was always meant to impress, to instill within the visitor a certain sense of awe. The cynic might say it was built to dupe the yokels, but many capital cities try to convey the same sense of imperium. Of course, Rome was frequently rebuilt over the course of many centuries, but what the tourist sees today is the result of efforts by four sixteenth-century popes who reigned between 1557 and 1590 and who successfully renovated a city that had fallen into disrepair and dysfunction. Pamela Long's Engineering the Eternal City is a history of that effort. It is a distinguished and perceptive recounting of what it took to bring about lasting change in an early-modern city.

Despite Rome's resemblance to other cities, in the sixteenth century it was unique. With a two-thousand-year-long history and as the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, Rome was also the center of the Papal Estates, the Pope's secular realm. Like most cities, Rome had a form of municipal government, the Capitoline Council, but it was also governed by the papacy itself, chiefly through "Congregations" of cardinals. Pontifical pressure was exerted—and taxes levied—on behalf of whatever project the reigning pope might wish, chiefly the streets, the sewers, the flood-prone Tiber River, and the aqueducts that supplied the city with water. Rome was a natural subject for the press, particularly the new subject of printed images and maps. But even simple matters could become subject of scholarly argument, most particularly the assorted ruins of the Roman Forum, whose exact location was hotly debated.

Urban historians will find many familiar themes here even if the cast of characters is somewhat strange. Popes who levy taxes for street repairs seem oddly out of character to the modern eye. But any city is a complex of inter-locking services, and changing any individual service affects most of the others. For example, in the 1560s the new form of horse-drawn "coach" (from the Hungarian Kocs) appeared in Italy and became the must-have fashion among Roman aristocrats. Their teams of four horses were unsuited to the winding, twisted streets of Rome, and the narrow wheels of coaches wore down the paved street surfaces rather quickly. The solution was not, of course, to restrict coaches, but to tear down residences and enlarge the streets, making them straighter and better surfaced. Many of the long, straight streets of modern Rome owe much to aristocratic privilege. [End Page 634]

The fusion of antiquarianism, Papal power, Renaissance notions of urban form, and engineering know-how is found in the moving of the Vatican Obelisk in 1586. Monolithic obelisks were leftovers from antiquity, and one in particular was lurking in the shadow of the expanded St. Peter's Basilica. Pope Sixtus V (the "engineer pope") commissioned Domenico Fontana to move the massive stone to the center of St. Peter's square. Fontana's gargantuan effort became a spectacle in itself, employing hundreds of workers and machines, attracting thousands of spectators. The successful completion was commemorated by Fontana's illustrated treatise in 1590, explaining the stupendous work in detail. Tourists today who know nothing of Fontana still marvel at the obelisk as they wander about the piazza.

Long is well-known to Renaissance historians as the author of several works synthesizing themes that stretch over long timespans and multiple nations. Engineering the Eternal City continues that tradition. Most previous studies of Renaissance Rome come from art or architectural history, while Long's synthesis...

审核人：

• 建造永恒之城：16 世纪晚期罗马的基础设施、地形和知识文化 作者：Pamela O. Long
• 伯特·霍尔（生物）

Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome By Pamela O. Long. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Pp. xi + 368.

Considered simply as a city, much of Rome more closely resembles Washington, DC, than it does, say, New York or Hamburg. Unlike the latter cities, Rome was always meant to impress, to instill within the visitor a certain sense of awe. The cynic might say it was built to dupe the yokels, but many capital cities try to convey the same sense of imperium. Of course, Rome was frequently rebuilt over the course of many centuries, but what the tourist sees today is the result of efforts by four sixteenth-century popes who reigned between 1557 and 1590 and who successfully renovated a city that had fallen into disrepair and dysfunction. Pamela Long's Engineering the Eternal City is a history of that effort. It is a distinguished and perceptive recounting of what it took to bring about lasting change in an early-modern city.

尽管罗马与其他城市相似，但在 16 世纪却是独一无二的。罗马拥有两千多年的历史，作为罗马天主教会的首都，也是教皇世俗领域教皇庄园的中心。像大多数城市一样，罗马有一种市政府形式，即卡比托利欧议会，但它也由教皇本身管理，主要是通过红衣主教的“会众”。教皇施加压力——并征税——代表在位教皇可能希望的任何项目，主要是街道、下水道、易发生洪水的台伯河以及为城市供水的渡槽。罗马是新闻界的自然主题，尤其是印刷图像和地图的新主题。但即使是简单的事情也可能成为学术争论的主题，

城市历史学家会在这里找到许多熟悉的主题，即使角色的演员阵容有些奇怪。为街道维修征税的教皇在现代人看来似乎很奇怪。但是任何一个城市都是一个连锁服务的综合体，改变任何一个服务都会影响到大多数其他服务。例如，在 1560 年代，新形式的马拉“教练”（来自匈牙利Kocs）出现在意大利，成为罗马贵族的必备时尚。他们的四匹马队不适合罗马蜿蜒曲折的街道，马车的狭窄车轮很快就磨损了铺砌的街道表面。解决方案当然不是限制长途汽车，而是拆除住宅并扩大街道，使它们更直、更好地浮出水面。现代罗马的许多长而直的街道很大程度上归功于贵族特权。[第634页结束]

在 1586 年移动梵蒂冈方尖碑的过程中，发现了古文物、教皇权力、文艺复兴时期的城市形态概念和工程技术的融合。 整体方尖碑是古代遗留下来的，特别是潜伏在扩建的阴影下圣彼得大教堂。教皇西斯都五世（“工程师教皇”）委托多梅尼科·丰塔纳将巨石移至圣彼得广场的中心。丰塔纳的巨大努力本身就变成了一种奇观，雇佣了数百名工人和机器，吸引了成千上万的观众。丰塔纳在 1590 年的插图论文中纪念了这一成功完成，详细解释了这项伟大的工作。今天对丰塔纳一无所知的游客在广场上闲逛时仍会惊叹于方尖碑。

朗是文艺复兴时期历史学家所熟知的，他撰写了多部作品，这些作品综合了跨越很长一段时间和多个国家的主题。设计永恒之城延续了这一传统。以往对罗马文艺复兴的研究大多来自艺术或建筑史，而朗的综合...