Class Summary: This course is designed to help students "learn Rome." Special emphasis is given to helping students appreciate and understand the past, so as to acquire the habit of analyzing modern culture and thus understanding how and why leaders act the way they do, and the impact of their decisions on national and international levels.

Parts I-III are on-site tours that focus on the art and architecture of ancient Rome, Christian Rome, the Renaissance, and the Modern period.

Part IV will include a series of in class lectures and focus on Renaissance and Baroque Art.

  1. Ancient Rome Ancient City Center
    • Preparation
    • Colosseum
    • Arch of Constantine
    • Palatine Hill
    • The Roman Forum
  2. Renaissance Rome  
    • Piazza Venezia
    • Chiesa di Gesu
    • Pantheon
    • Santa Maria sopra Minerva
    • Trevi Fountain
    • St. Peter’s Basilica
    • Vatican Museum
    • Caravaggio Tour
  3. Modernity: Secret Rome Tour
    • Masons as secret force behind world politics
    • The occult influences on “science”
    • The change of politics
    • Secret societies
    • Destruction of the church
    • Pop occultism
    • Real treasures of Rome
  4. Renaissance and Baroque Art in Early Modern Rome: Artists and Rivals
    • Leonardo and Michelangelo
    • Raphael and Michelangelo
    • Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci
    • Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini
  5. Bibliography:
    • M. B. Hall, After Raphael, Painting in Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
    • R. Wittkower, Art and architecture in Italy: 1600 to 1750, Armondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986.