Rome Is Love Spelled Backward: Enjoying Art and Architecture in the Eternal City - Softcover

"This unusual and worthy guidebook ... covers the city's art and architecture with insight, sensitivity, and scholarly perspective rarely found in travel manuals."--Publishers Weekly "With a text both scholarly and entertaining, Testa has produced a guide useful for the serious student and passionate sightseer.... The text is characterized by both lucidity and a sincere love of the subject matter, and this makes the book a pleasure to read and also a wonderful guide for travelers to Rome."--Choice "The touch is light and the enthusiasm infectious.... An informative book for lovers of Rome and its art that armchair travelers will also enjoy."--William L. MacDonald, author of The Art and Architecture of the Roman Empire

A guide to the art, architecture and timeless human passion of Rome. It focuses on the merging of art and ambition; famous and forgotten monuments play a part in the account, as do the artists and patrons who brought them into being. The first chapters concentrate on the people, art and architecture of imperial Rome. It then explores the legacy of early Christian and medieval Rome before moving on to reveal how Michelangelo, Bernini, Caravaggio, and Borromini shaped the brilliant art of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Whether exploring the Colosseum and the Jewish catacombs, discovering the eccentric Quartiere Coppede, or reminding readers not to forget the more recent monuments to the victims of the city's Nazi occupation, Judith Testa writes with an eye for the unusual. For her, the ancient wordplay on "Roma" and "amor" holds the key to unravelling some fascinating cultural puzzles.