Rome in 1860

A Rome of grey walls, muddy streets and sleepy peasants greets Edward Dicey—not the enchanted city of emperors and saints. Can a traveller look at the Eternal City and see only what it is now?

In Rome in 1860, Dicey asks his reader to set aside the pageant of the past and enter the living city on a sunless, damp day. From the desolate Campagna to the crowded streets, he finds beggars calling for alms, priests trudging past roadside shrines, and shops dim beneath peeling walls. The city’s grandeur lingers, but its daily life is marked by poverty, decay and a strange lack of movement. To see Rome clearly, Dicey must resist the glamour of its history—and face what that glamour might conceal. What does the stranger discover when the monuments fall out of view?

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