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Rome

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Rome

By: Robert Hughes
Narrated by: David Timson
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For almost a thousand years, Rome held sway as the spiritual and artistic centre of the world. Hughes vividly recreates the ancient Rome of Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula, Cicero, Martial and Virgil. With the artistic blossoming of the Renaissance, he casts his unwavering critical eye over the great works of Raphael, Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, shedding new light on the Old Masters. In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Rome's cultural predominance was assured, artists and tourists from all over Europe converged on the city. Hughes brilliantly analyses the defining works of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rubens and Bernini.

Hughes' Rome is a vibrant, contradictory, spectacular and secretive place; a monument both to human glory and human error. In equal parts loving, iconoclastic, enraged and wise, peopled with colourful figures and rich in unexpected details, ROME is an exhilarating journey through the story of one of the world's most glorious cities.

Read by David Timson

(p) 2011 Orion Publishing Group©2011 Robert Hughes
Ancient Art Europe Italy Rome Western Europe Renaissance Ancient History Middle Ages
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Having listened to Mike Duncan’s brilliant Podcast The History Of Rome, I’ve been quite interested in the Roman Empire, and I was interested in another perspective. I was thrilled to find this book because Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore has always been my favourite book. This audiobook has been my favourite so far, it is the perfect blend of ancient and modern history, culture, art, religion and politics. Every aspect of the Italian psyche is concisely covered without getting even remotely long-winded or boring. David Timson read it with engaging perfection. I simply loved listening to this one! Bravo!

Totally engaging.

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excellent first half falls off track badly into an almost pompous view if Roman / Italian Art post about 350 CE. unsatisfying however if you have a more academic pent then you may enjoy the second half as well.

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