Since the 1980s, research on the monumental centre of ancient Rome has experienced an increase comparable in intensity of heuristic potential to the research done at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century, which brought to light the main features of the ancient city. As a consequence, our idea of Rome has completely changed: recent work both questions the moment when Rome can be defined as a city, and restores data that allow us to get a proper idea of the historical development of the city (and not only in the Augustan or imperial periods). Nevertheless, works systemising this new data in a framework of synthesis have previously been lacking, a gap now filled by the Atlas of Ancient Rome (ed. A. Carandini, English edn, 2017), which can be situated in the line of topographical studies, and this volume, which is based on a framework of historical studies.

In the foreword Grandazzi points out that this volume aims to fill a triple gap regarding the city of Rome: to bring the attention of Roman historical studies back to their origin, namely the city of Rome; to allow non-specialists to explore these new discoveries by extracting them from the myriad of topographical specialist studies; and to restore the actual function of ancient Rome in contemporary society. The history of the city is developed in three parts, with a prologue and a conclusion. In the prologue, G. outlines the geology of Rome, a rather unexpected and welcome topic for an historical work. In the first part (1. ‘Regnum: The Regal City’) he then moves on to write about the population of the hills surrounding the river Tiber from prehistory through the first sedentary occupations, to the formation of an urban settlement and its consolidation. The second part (2. ‘Civitas: The Free City (509–202 BC)’) begins with an account of the republican period and outlines the affirmation of the city as a new power in the Mediterranean, while the third part (3. ‘The Metropolis’) presents a relentless itinerary of Rome down to the dominion of the Mediterranean and the transformation of its physiognomy and population in a process which ended with the death of Augustus. In the conclusion G. pictures the layout of Rome in 14 c.e., when it was already an urban reality and the epicentre of a civilisation that had become universal, which explains why G. ends its story with Augustus.

The novelty of this volume is already underlined in the title: this is the history of a place (the city). The last two decades have seen the rediscovery of place and space by historians (the ‘spatial turn’), but ancient history does not seem to have participated fully in this rediscovery. The idea that space could be a productive force, which shapes social processes, actions and identities, derives from twentieth-century historical-philosophical thought, particularly the work of H. Lefebvre and M. Foucault. G. deals with this issue to the extent that his history is not primarily about the topography or architecture of Rome, but is rather the history of the long metamorphosis from a village to a metropolis analysed through the monuments of Rome. The history of Rome is seen in the light of this spatial approach. Its monuments are seen as pins of the general symbolic device of a society of the spectacle, as Roman society is understood to have been: in G.’s approach, events become monuments and the monuments are many events. The message transmitted by the monuments is decoded using archaeological and literary sources. De facto, not every monument is involved to tell this story. The enormous amount of data sets limits, not only chronological (the story ends with Augustus), but also topographical and thematic: the monuments involved are inside the urban walls, but private buildings are excluded.

G. is particularly successful in bringing us inside this story, and describing this long metamorphosis of Rome, in the first part, where the archaeological data are the main thread and the development of space is focused around single monuments. Subsequently, when the main monuments and the literary sources come to play a predominant role in the story, the narrative suffers, not least because of the overwhelming amount of data; G.’s account is here less fluent, and the overall metamorphosis falls into the background of description of particular monuments and events. Moreover, these later sections are largely the story of the public city: a public collective scene is outlined, but everyday life is missed.

However, this book represents an important step forward in the revitalisation of historical studies, firstly because of its spatial approach. The narrative style is also new. G. outlines no digital virtual reality: rather he brings the reader into Rome and reproduces its metamorphosis as it would have unfolded before his eyes, familiar and alive. On the one hand he provides a vivid sensorial description of the environment (the fronds stirred by the wind, the flow of streams, the smoke from the huts: 53); on the other, he refers constantly to the present-day world, known to the reader, in order to reveal the extent of certain phenomena. The only limitation of the book, however intentional, is the lack of an iconographic apparatus. We agree with G. that images cannot by themselves explain the metamorphosis of Rome, but they do make it more understandable by allowing us to visualise the changing space of the city. A video-timelapse of maps of Rome from prehistory to the end of Roman civilisation could help to ignite the desire of the reader, and to turn the city and its history into a living treasure rather than a grave. This is, after all, G.’s intent, and it should be the aim of anyone dealing with the ancient world.