July 2007 Newsletter, Vol. 36, No.3
Guggenheim 2007
Pamela O. Long, independent historian, is working on a book, “Engineering the Eternal City: Power, Knowledge, and Urbanization in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome.”
Her fellowship goal is to complete the archival research for a cultural history of engineeri
My goal for the fellowship period is to complete the archival research for a book that is a cultural history of engineering in Rome for a 30 year period – the early ‘counter-reformation’ decades from 1560 to 1590. The investigation is centered on the processes of decision making, the work of construction and reconstruction, conflicts concerning contracts and costs, and failures as well as successes. It seeks to understand engineering as part of a project of urbanization and aggrandizement of the capital city to make it representative of the power and authority of the church and the popes. At the same time it aims to be a cultural history, which explores the ways in which the various populations of Rome were affected by and influenced the activities of construction and urban reform. It explores the interrelationships of engineering, political and moral power and authority, and urban reform both from the top down and from the bottom up. It explores the relationships and conflicts between the two entities that governed Rome, the communal government and the papacy, particularly as they played out in engineering projects such as aqueduct repair. Finally, it studies the images of the city in the form of maps as well as pictorial images of various sites. Remaking the city and representing the city visually went hand in hand.
Rome changed dramatically in the three decades between 1560 and 1590. Workers reconstructed ancient aqueducts, built numerous new fountains, paved and widened streets, and moved obelisks, following new urban designs envisioned by the early counter-reformation popes and their architects. They also constructed or renovated numerous churches and palaces.
These changes were accompanied by attempts to control the people of Rome, including women, Jews, beggars, and bandits. This investigation studies these developments as part of a process (of both cooperation and conflict) between the papacy and the Commune of Rome. The study is based on archival documents, numerous writings on issues from flood control to streets, and visual materials such as images of Rome and maps. It explores the ways in which Romans produced writings, images, maps, and physical structures that both transformed the city itself and created a culture of knowledge based on practical and technical concerns.
Discursive engineering allied the constructive and practical arts with the humanist study of antiquities and ruins. Learned antiquarianism and contemporary engineering projects came to be strongly allied. This study is based on extensive archival research and on the many contemporary writings on topics such as flood control, aqueduct repair, and obelisk transport. Rome in the generation before Galileo became an important center for the overlap and communication between learned and practical culture, and as such may have contributed to the development of the new sciences that combined theory and practice in new ways
