Promoting the Image of Rome: Guidebooks between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Alessio Ciannarella, Ph.D.

For centuries, guidebooks have accompanied pilgrims and foreigners on their discovery of Rome's historical, artistic, and religious heritage. How did these books influence the visitors' perception of the city? What role did the periegetic literature play in the process of constructing and promoting the image of Rome between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries? 
The present research aims to reflect on these issues by analyzing the criteria adopted by authors in writing guidebooks. In fact, every choice is highly significant because it contributes to the exaltation of a specific vision of Rome: from the type of information chosen to the organization of content, from the special attention paid to specific buildings to the omissions. Each guide does not simply describe the urban space but constructs it.
For this purpose, the project includes the elaboration of a digital map, which, through the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS), will make it possible to compare routes that were suggested, buildings that were described, and views that were reproduced in the main guidebooks of Rome. The map makes it possible to visualize topographically how each book configures and organizes space and time, recovering the dimension of practical utility that these volumes have had for centuries.
Establishing the peculiar characteristics of these guidebooks is also essential for understanding how the visiter experience has evolved over the centuries, especially between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Ancien Régime traveler gradually gave way to the modern tourist.