There has been a flurry of activity concerning ecclesiastical palace architecture and decoration in Italy in recent years. This large book joins A. Monciatti, Il Palazzo Vaticano nel medioevo (Florence 2005), M.T. Gigliozzi, I palazzi del papa (Rome 2003) and the acts of a conference at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, Domus et splendida palatia (2002). While the author was unable to take fully into account the contemporaneous contribution on the Vatican palace by Monciatti, he does draw profitably on Maureen Miller's pioneering discussion, The bishop's palace: architecture and authority in medieval Italy, Ithaca 2000. The book is well-produced, although the photographs are often too grey, and there are adequate indices of places and persons and a good bibliography.

The first section of the book is a lengthy catalogue of papal residences which includes the Roman palaces beside the Lateran and Vatican basilicas – those of Honorius iv on the Aventine Hill and of Nicholas iv at S. Maria Maggiore – and those at Viterbo, Orvieto, Anagni, Perugia, Rieti, Montefiascone and Soriano nel Cimino. The residences chosen for discussion are those where popes spent a hundred days or more during the duecento The literature on papal palaces is uneven, and the author adapts his work accordingly: where palaces have already been well discussed, as at Viterbo, he is content to absorb or refer to those findings, while for other residences such as those at Rieti or Soriano he provides an exhaustive account and analysis. The results are therefore occasionally disappointing, and it is hard at times to avoid the view that from within this very long book there is a more focused, thinner, one struggling to emerge. But the discussions of Orvieto, Perugia and Rieti are certainly the best we now have, and throughout the author makes acute and well-informed comments on such topics as the hierarchy and sequence of rooms, comparative typologies, practical usages and liturgical organisation. Alongside detailed examination of the existing buildings Le Pogam makes fruitful use of the evidence of paintings and surviving furniture and displays an enviable knowledge of the papal registers, inventories and local chronicles. In discussing the internal décor, he might have noticed more the wide use of carpets affirmed in many paintings of papal ceremonies, and richly corroborated by the inventories. At an exhibition in 2005 celebrating Arnolfo di Cambio in Perugia an extraordinarily well-preserved wooden folding-stool with lion-head terminals from the Museo Capitolare, very similar to an early trecento illumination of Benedict xi in the Dominican Liber indulgentie ordinis fratrum predicatorum, was exhibited.

The decision to begin after Innocent iv's return from exile is defensible, but information about papal residences in the Campagna known from the first half of the century, and the logistics of itinerancy and ephemeral construction, does represent something of a loss. Viterbo does not seem to have been frequented after the pontificate of Martin iv (1281–5). The palace, well-studied recently by Radke, has not suffered the devastating medievalising restoration which has damaged the palaces at Orvieto. His discussion of Orvieto nevertheless adds much new information, discriminating clearly between the constructions under Urban iv, Martin iv and Boniface viii. At Anagni Boniface was about to promulgate Super Petri solio ‘in aula nostri palatii’ when Nogaret and his ruffians struck. Here, as elsewhere, difficulties of access and the loss of recent documentation hampered the indefatigable author. The account of the palace at Perugia, a favourite city for villeggiatura, is particularly valuable and enterprising, paradigmatic of the often uneasy relationship between a commune, its bishop and its eminent visitor. Adaptation, some new building and plain make-do were the order of the day.

Another pioneering section concerns the residence of Honorius iv near Santa Sabina. Whereas nothing now survives of Nicholas iv's residence at Santa Maria Maggiore, the Aventine palace was unique in Rome. Architectural analogies with Ninfa and the Caetani citadel at Cecilia Metella are noted, and the fact that Giacomo Savelli as cardinal was titular of nearby Santa Maria in Cosmedin. At Rieti, restoration during the Fascist period has obscured much, but the author shows that Boniface viii was more active there than had previously been thought, and provides the most penetrating analysis that we have of the remaining fabric.The same can be said of Le Pogom's lengthy discussion of Montefiascone, where his familiarity with the papal documents allows him to distance himself from Gottfried Kerscher's recent book. Soriano, as a medieval residence of the Orsini, suffered both from later occupation by Rodrigo Borgia and the not uncommon transformation into a prison which has irretrievably damaged many Italian medieval buildings, not least the Dominican church of S. Maria in Gradi at Viterbo. In discussing Soriano, and later in the more synthetic chapters which follow the catalogue, the categorisation of papal residences could perhaps be sharper – did they serve primarily as police stations or palaces, particularly as the period saw the steady northward advance of papal residence?

The catalogue is followed by chapters on the construction processes, internal functioning, the relative accessibility of rooms, the privacy of the pope, the impact of papal palaces on their urban environments, concluding with an analysis of the politics of papal architecture. In contrast to some of the catalogue entries one was here left wishing for more; much said here complements and enriches the author's earlier book Les Maitres d'oeuvres au service de la papauté dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle, Rome 2004.

More could have been expected on palatial typology, where Miller made a significant start, although episcopal palaces were probably less accretive in their construction than papal residences, and the author routinely abuses that profoundly misleading concept evolution. But the relationship of bishop's residence and cathedral, the placing of both within the late antique city, and the later coexistence with communal seats of authority spills over into papal Orvieto and Viterbo among others, and a more penetrating discrimination is probably possible. There is significant new material on loggias and their multifarious uses, kitchens – although the author fails to note that the papal chef Fra Raulino was important enough to possess his own seal – and the central problem of archives and their storage. On all this the book will become a required reference.

Discussions of the slippery terminology of domus and camera are also welcome. Le Pogam differs firmly from recent emphases on the largely judicial function of papal halls, and he differentiates the residence from the place of work. The papal palace, the author asserts, was not a collective residence: the pope lived alone with his attendants, those figures recorded in paintings of the Dream of Innocent III at Assisi, or mentioned in William Hundleby's account of the attack at Anagni. The impact of villeggiatura on the Roman stational liturgy is considered and on subsequent developments at Avignon and thereafter. The fundamental shift of papal residence from the Lateran to the Vatican occurred, it is suggested, under Nicholas iii, one of the most energetic papal builders of the period. At times wider comparison would have been illuminating, notably of secular courts of the kind described by Malcolm Vale, as would more specific reference to comparable architectural complexes in Lazio, not merely the palace at Alatri but both palaces at Guarcino, one surviving and the ‘Palazzo del Cardinale’ lost in the last war. Much more could have been said on San Flaviano at Montefiascone, its immediate architectural relationship to Orvieto cathedral and that of its frescoes to the Orsini chapel in the Lower Church at Assisi, leaving aside the much more enigmatic internal architectural organisation with a throne set high above the main altar. In Rome secular occupation of the palace at SS. Quattro Coronati is overlooked, and the judgements on Nicholas iv and Santa Maria in Aracoeli will need revision in the light of Claudia Bolgia's forthcoming monograph. One muddle should be noted, the allusion to Santa Croce and Cardinal Ottaviano Ubaldini refers not to Florence but to the family stronghold in the lower Val d'Arno from whence Guido Levi long ago published an illuminating inventory.

In sum this is a magnificent contribution to studies of secular architecture in medieval Italy, the structures and procedures of the papal household and papal artistic patronage. No one interested in any of these topics will be able to ignore it.