- The Colosseum
- Keith Hopkins
- Mary Beard
- The history of the Colosseum is, in reality, much stranger than the legend. In this engaging book, we learn the details of how the arena was built and at what cost; we meet the emperors who sometimes fought in gladiatorial games; and we take measure of the audience who reveled in, or opposed, these games. The authors also trace the strange afterlife of the monument.
- Hardcover 2005
- Piazza San Marco
- Iain Fenlon
- The Piazza San Marco, one of the most famous and instantly recognizable townscapes in the West, if not the world, has been described as a stage set, as Europe’s drawing room, as a painter’s canvas. This book traces the changing shape and function of the piazza, from its beginnings in the ninth century to its present day ubiquity in the Venetian, European, as well as global imagination.
- Hardcover 2009
- St. Peter's
- Keith Miller
- Built by the decree of Constantine, rebuilt by some of the most distinguished architects in Renaissance Italy, emulated by Hitler's architect in his vision for Germania, immortalized on film by Fellini, and fictionalized by a modern American bestseller, St. Peter's is the most recognizable church in the world. This book covers the social, political, and architectural history of the church from the fourth century to the present.
- Hardcover 2007
- Venice from the Ground Up
- James H. S. McGregor
- Venice came to life on mudflats at the edge of the habitable world. Protected in a tidal estuary from invaders and Byzantine overlords, the fishermen and traders who settled there crafted a way of life unlike anything the Roman Empire had ever known. In an astonishing feat of narrative history, James H. S. McGregor recreates this world, with its waterways rather than roads and its livelihood harvested from the sea. The narrative follows both a chronological and geographical organization, so that readers can trace the city's evolution by chapter and visitors can explore it by district on foot and by boat.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008