Recommended Books & Films

General Interest & History

Presenting a "warts and all" view of the Italian character, Luigi Barzini's The Italians should almost be required reading for anyone contemplating a trip to Rome. It's lively, fun, and not at all academic.

Edward Gibbon's 1776 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published in six volumes, but Penguin issues a manageable abridgement. This work has been hailed as one of the greatest histories ever written. No one has ever captured the saga of the glory that was Rome the way Gibbon did.

One of the best books on the long history of the papacy -- detailing its excesses, triumphs, defeats, and most vivid characters -- is Michael Walsh's An Illustrated History of the Popes: Saint Peter to John Paul II.

In the 20th century, the most fascinating period in Italian history was the rise and fall of fascism, as detailed in countless works. One of the best biographies of Il Duce is Denis M. Smith's Mussolini: A Biography. Another subject that's always engrossing is the Mafia, which is detailed, godfathers and all, in Pino Arlacchi's Mafia Business: The Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

William Murray's The Last Italian: Portrait of a People is his second volume of essays on his favorite subject -- Italy, its warm people, and its astonishing civilization. The New York Times called it "a lover's keen, observant diary of his affair."

Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Vita Italiana of an American Journalist, by Jack Casserly, is the entertaining and affectionate memoir of a former bureau chief in Rome from 1957 to 1964. He captures the spirit of Italia sparita (bygone Italy) with such celebrity cameos as Maria Callas and the American expatriate singer Bricktop.

Art & Architecture

From the Colosseum to Michelangelo, T. W. Potter provides one of the best accounts of the art and architecture of Rome in Roman Italy, which is also illustrated. Another good book on the same subject is Roman Art and Architecture, by Mortimer Wheeler.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration, by Michael Hirst and others, uses nearly 300 color photographs to illustrate the lengthy and painstaking restoration of Michelangelo's 16th-century frescoes in the Vatican.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists Vols. I and II is a collection of biographies of the great artists from Cimabue up to Vasari's 16th-century contemporaries. It's an interesting read, full of anecdotes and Vasari's theories on art practice. For a more modern art history take, the indispensable tome is Frederick Hartt's History of Italian Renaissance Art. For an easier and more colorful introduction, get Michael Levey's Early Renaissance and High Renaissance.

Fiction & Biography

No one does it better than John Hersey in his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bell for Adano, a frequently reprinted classic. It's a well-written and disturbing story of the American invasion of Italy.

One of the best-known Italian writers published in England is Alberto Moravia, born in 1907. His neorealistic novels are immensely entertaining and are read around the world. Notable works include Roman Tales, The Woman of Rome, and The Conformist.

For the wildly entertaining books on ancient Rome, detailing its most flamboyant personalities and excesses, read I, Claudius and Claudius the God, both by Robert Graves. Borrowing from the histories of Tacitus and Suetonius, the series begins at the end of the Emperor Augustus's reign and ends with the death of Claudius in the 1st century A.D. In 1998, the Modern Library placed I, Claudius at no. 14 on its list of the 100 finest English-language novels published last century.

Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series is rich, fascinating, and historically detailed, bringing to vivid life such greats as Gaius Marius (The First Man in Rome), Lucius Cornelius Sulla (The Grass Crown), and Julius Caesar (Fortune's Favorites and Caesar's Women).

Michelangelo: a Biography, by George Bull, is a well-written scholarly take on the life of the artist, penned by a Renaissance expert and one of the most respected translators of Italian classic literature.

Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy, filmed with Charlton Heston playing Michelangelo, is the easiest to read and the most pop version of the life of this great artist. Heston viewed it as his greatest role and never ceased trying to keep Michelangelo from coming out of the closet.

Many other writers have tried to capture the peculiar nature of Italy. Notable works include Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View, Henry James's The Aspern Papers, Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard, Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover, and Mark Helprin's underappreciated masterwork, A Soldier of the Great War.

Films

Italian films have never regained the glory they enjoyed in the postwar era. Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1946) influenced Hollywood's films noirs of the late 1940s and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thief (1948) achieved world renown.

The late Federico Fellini burst into Italian cinema with his highly individual style, beginning with La Strada (1954) and going on to such classics as Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Amarcord (1974), Roma (1972), and The City of Women (1980). La Dolce Vita (1961) helped to define an era.

Marxist, homosexual, and practicing Catholic, Pier Paolo Pasolini was the most controversial of Roman filmmakers until his mysterious murder in 1975. Explicit sex scenes in Decameron (1971) made it a world box-office hit.

Bernardo Bertolucci, once an assistant to Pasolini, achieved fame with such films as The Conformist (1970), based on the novel by Moravia. His 1900 is an epic spanning 20th-century Italian history and politics.

Michelangelo Antonioni swept across the screens of the world with his films of psychological anguish, including La Notte (1961), L'Avventura (1964), and The Red Desert (1964).

Mediterraneo, directed by Gabriele Salvatores, was a whimsical comedy that won an Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1991. It tells the story of eight Italian soldiers stranded on a Greek island in World War II.

Giuseppe Tornatore, who achieved such fame with Cinema Paradiso, which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film of 1989, directed one of three vignettes in the 1992 film Especially on Sunday. The Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, both directors, created a stir in 1994 with the release of their film Fiorile.

Caro Diario (1994), starring and directed by Nanni Moretti, is a three-part traipse through modern-day Italy. Moretti, a cult figure in Italy, is noted for his prickly personality, quirky sense of humor, and deadpan tone.

The Flight of the Innocent (1995) is one of the finest films to come out of Italy in recent times -- and one that quickly gained an international audience. The director, Carlo Carlei, takes us inside the world of a 10-year-old boy fleeing for his life. It's one of the best depictions ever of a child alone who must improvise and cope with a world he doesn't understand.

Although directors more than stars have dominated Italian cinema, three actors have emerged to gain worldwide fame, including Marcello Mastroianni, star of such hits as La Dolce Vita (1961), and Sophia Loren, whose best film is considered Two Women (1961). Mastroianni was Fellini's favorite male actor and he starred him once again in 8 1/2. Anna Magnani not only starred in Italian films but also made many American films as well, including The Rose Tattoo (1955), with Burt Lancaster, and The Fugitive Kind (1960), with Marlon Brando.

Many 20th-century film classics with Roman backgrounds are available in DVD, including Roman Holiday (1953), starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. Basically a travelogue of Rome, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) launched the tradition of tossing coins in the Trevi Fountain.

Rome came in for its greatest attention in recent years in the hit TV series Rome (2005-2007), a saga centering on the last years of the reign of Julius Caesar and the founding of the empire. The series combined historical figures with equally compelling fictional side characters.

Hollywood on the Tiber -- The days of the '50s and '60s when all of Hollywood seemed to show up in Rome, and the paparazzi mobbed such Hollywood stars as Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman along the Via Veneto, are but lovely memories. Even if you didn't see these major films previewed below at the time of their release, you can catch all of them on the late show. Movie buffs are fond of visiting the actual sites where these films were shot.

No street in Rome was more famous than Via Veneto when Federico Fellini released his now classic La Dolce Vita in 1960. Its stars, Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, frolicked in the rococo Fountain of Trevi. Tourists still come here to toss coins in the fountain, as the actors did in the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain, which is said to ensure their return to Rome.

It was on Via Margutta that Gregory Peck spent the night with his runaway princess, Audrey Hepburn, in Roman Holiday (1953). Fellini and his wife, Giulietta Masina, once lived on this street as well. Relive one of Roman Holiday's most memorable scenes at Bocca della Verità, at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, 18 Piazza della Verità. This ancient stone face is said to bite those who dare to lie while sticking their hand in the "mouth of truth."

It was along Via Montecuccoli that Anna Magnani, playing Pina, was gunned down on her wedding day in one of the most unforgettable scenes from Roberto Rossellini's 1945 Rome, Open City.

More recent films include 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon as the Machiavellian Tom Ripley. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, this thriller features many gorgeous shots of Rome.

In 1996, scenes from Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady were shot at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, at Piazza del Campodoglio.

Recordings

Medieval & Renaissance Music -- An excellent collection of the late Renaissance's sonatas, canzonettas, and madrigals, played on original Renaissance instruments, is entitled Music from the Time of Guido Reni. (Guido Reni, born 1575 and died 1642, was a Renaissance painter who probably caused more public discord because of his philandering and political intrigues than any other in Italian history. He was eventually exiled from Rome in 1622.) This particular collection of works by this artist's musical contemporaries was recorded by the Aurora Ensemble.

Orchestral & Operatic Works -- The best way for most novices to begin an appreciation of opera is to hear an assemblage of great moments of opera accumulated onto one record. A good example contains works by the most evocative and dramatic singer who ever hit a high "C" on the operatic stage, Maria Callas. La Voce: Historic Recordings of the Great Diva brings together "La Callas'" spectacular arias from Lucia di Lammermoor, La Traviata, Norma, and The Barber of Seville.

Recordings of complete and unedited operas are even more rewarding. Excellent examples include the following: Bellini's Norma, featuring the divine and legendary Maria Callas, accompanied by the orchestra and the chorus of Milan's La Scala, is one of the world's great operatic events; Tullio Serafin conducts. Giuseppe Verdi's genius can be appreciated through Nabucco, performed with Plácido Domingo by the Rydl Choir and Orchestra of the Dutch National Opera, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli. Also insightful for the vocal techniques of Verdi, his Complete Songs is recorded by Renata Scotto (soprano) and Paolo Washington (bass), accompanied by Vincenzo Scalera (piano). Rossini's great opera Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Puccini's Tosca, both recorded in their complete versions by the Turin Opera Orchestra and Chorus, are both conducted by Bruno Campanella.

And no compendium of Italian opera would be complete without including the immortal tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose interpretations of Verdi's idealistic heroes have become almost definitive. His La Traviata is particularly memorable and passionate.

The music of Rome continues to enjoy brisk sales, and recordings are available on such sites as Amazon.com. An unusual offering is "Synaulia -- Music from Ancient Rome," Vol. 1, devoted to wind instruments. "Night in Rome" features music played by the London Philharmonic, and another DVD audio, also called "Night in Rome," stars Italian musicians. "Rome: A Musical Journey" takes you on a musical tour of Rome in DVD. "Respighi: Pines of Rome/Roman Festivals," is an audio CD, featuring such conductors as Leonard Bernstein.