Books by Katherine Rinne
Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis,... more Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis, this is the first book to take the long view of the Eternal City as an urban organism. Three thousand years old and counting, Rome has thrived almost from the start on self-reference, supplementing the everyday concerns of urban management and planning by projecting its own past onto the city of the moment. This is a study of the urban processes by which Rome's people and leaders, both as custodians of its illustrious past and as agents of its expansive power, have shaped and conditioned its urban fabric by manipulating geography and organizing space; planning infrastructure; designing and presiding over mythmaking, ritual, and stagecraft; controlling resident and transient populations; and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital.
"In this pioneering study of the water infrastructure of Renaissance Rome, urban historian Kather... more "In this pioneering study of the water infrastructure of Renaissance Rome, urban historian Katherine Rinne offers a new understanding of how technological and scientific developments in aqueduct and fountain architecture helped turn a medieval backwater into the preeminent city of late Renaissance Europe. Supported by the author’s extensive topographical research, this book presents a unified vision of the city that links improvements to public and private water systems with political, religious, and social change. Between 1560 and 1630, in a spectacular burst of urban renewal, Rome’s religious and civil authorities sponsored the construction of aqueducts, private and public fountains for drinking, washing, and industry, and the magnificent ceremonial fountains that are Rome’s glory. Tying together the technological, sociopolitical, and artistic questions that faced the designers during an age of turmoil in which the Catholic Church found its authority threatened and the infrastructure of the city was in a state of decay, Rinne shows how these public works projects transformed Rome in a successful marriage of innovative engineering and strategic urban planning."
Francesco, a 12-year old apprentice stonemason leaves his small village to go to Rome in 1748. He... more Francesco, a 12-year old apprentice stonemason leaves his small village to go to Rome in 1748. He works on the Trevi Fountain with his uncle, who designed it, and some other young apprentices. His errands and work take him all over this city of confusing streets and alleys. Francesco's adventurous spirit and his common sense help him to navigate and understand Rome. While Francesco and the other apprentices are fictional characters, his uncle, Nicola Salvi and the other architects and sculptors are real historical figures. Under the guidance of these men, Francesco learns how to inspect marble and how to carve sculptural details. He learns about aqueducts and fountains and solves the mystery of the stolen water. When Rome is flooded in 1750 he helps save the Trevi Fountain. The death of his beloved uncle forces him to leave Rome, but not until he fulfills his promise to finish his work on the fountain.
Papers by Katherine Rinne
Memoirs of The American Academy in Rome, 2022
Abundant fresh water from three newly restored ancient aqueducts, the Acqua Vergine (1560-1570, A... more Abundant fresh water from three newly restored ancient aqueducts, the Acqua Vergine (1560-1570, Acqua Felice (1585-1587), and Acqua Paola (1607-1612), transformed Rome from a relatively backwater medieval town into a baroque city that was the envy of Europe by the 1620s. Most notable were the ornamental fountains in Rome's streets and piazzas that remained unequalled by those in any other European city for centuries to come. Equally, if not more, important were the public drinking, animal, and laundry basins that facilitated the daily life and work of Rome's non-elite population. Among the persons whose lives were most a ected by the new public water supply were two groups of water workers: acquaeroli, water carriers and sellers who were primarily men, and, most especially, lavandare, laundry women. This essay examines spatial and topographic changes to working environments and some of the social and physical impacts of these changes on the lives of workers, particularly laundresses. In his treatise of 1452, De re aedi cata, Leon Battista Alberti presented Pope Nicolas V with a focused urban strategy that he thought Humanist patrons ought to employ for socially committed architectural projects. Patrons (princes in particular) could accomplish such projects, Alberti stressed, by implementing three linked programs: restoring ancient buildings; providing a reliable water supply; and distributing water wisely, saving the best for drinking, while providing for many other uses. 1 Alberti's advice was timely; when he wrote, clean water was hard to nd anywhere in Rome. The polluted Tiber River was the primary source for drinking water, but a heavy sediment load combined with human and animal waste, and artisanal and manufacturing pollution created by tanners, dyers, millers, laundresses, and others, kept the river lthy. Little aqueduct water (itself none too clean at the time since it came from streams rather than the underground source springs) still owed from the ancient Aqua Virgo into a basin located in the same area as today's Trevi Fountain and from there to two nearby drinking fountains. There were probably no more than two other fountains in the city: one in Piazza di S. Pietro, the other in Piazza di S. Maria in Trastevere. A few small springs still owed, among them the Damasiana at the Vatican and Fonte di S. Giorgio in the Velabrum. Clean water was an urgent necessity. Fortunately, by the early seventeenth century, Rome's water landscape had changed dramatically. The Tiber was marginally cleaner because of newly enforced laws about throwing garbage, debris, and animal byproducts into it, but mercifully it was no longer the primary source for domestic water use. Three ancient aqueducts (including the Aqua Virgo, by then called the Acqua Vergine) had been restored back to their ancient sources and together supplied seventy-ve public fountains as well as many private palace and garden fountains across the city. There were now many ornamental fountains (a term I use to indicate magni cenza, that is, fountains with an important role to beautify urban streets and piazzas and to valorize papal largesse); there were new drinking fountains and animal troughs owing with clean and fresh 1 "… [S]ince a city requires a large amount of water not only for drinking but also for washing, for gardens, tanners and fullers, and drains, and-this is very important-in case of a sudden outbreak of re, the best should be reserved for drinking, and the remainder distributed according to need." (… desiandosi ne le città la copia de le acqua, non solamente per bere, ma etiandio per lavare, come per gli horti, per conciatori di cuoio, e di vesti, e per mondare le fogne, e per estinguere un subito fuoco, eleggasi la migliore per bere, le altre, come si conviene siano accommodate); Alberti 1988, 331.
Aquae Urbis Romae: the Waters of the City of Rome. A web-based 1994-present cartographic resource... more Aquae Urbis Romae: the Waters of the City of Rome. A web-based 1994-present cartographic resource for students and scholars concerning the nearly 2800-year history of water and urban process in Rome. Develop, research, create, and curate ongoing project at University of Virginia, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities.
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Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2010
The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late …, Jan 1, 2007
Among the important engineering projects that were undertaken in Rome during the late-sixteenth a... more Among the important engineering projects that were undertaken in Rome during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were three proposals to restore and build aqueducts. The scale of these projects was enormous, yet all three were implemented and they had a profound effect on the city. They not only spurred urban growth and improved public health with a reliable and abundant water supply, but also, they shaped new modes of urban and territorial administration and helped to re-establish the joint temporal and spiritual hegemony of Rome and the Church as the centre of Christianity during the Counter Reformation. The fi rst of these projects was a restoration of the ancient Aqua Virgo, by then called the Acqua Vergine, carried out between 1560 and 1570. This restoration was initiated by Pope Pius IV (1559-65) and completed under Pius V (1566-72). Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) sponsored the Acqua Felice between 1585 and 1587. That aqueduct tapped the springs of one ancient aqueduct, the Aqua Alexandrina and linked portions of the restored channel of another, the Aqua Marcia, with wholly new construction. The Acqua Paola, built between 1607 and 1612 under Pope Paul V (1605-21), reused the springs and followed along the course of the ancient Aqua Traiana using almost entirely new construction.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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Books by Katherine Rinne
Papers by Katherine Rinne
The long term goals of this project are to increase understanding of the profound relationships that exist between water systems, cultural practice, and urbanism in Rome, and by its example, in all cities, landscapes, and environments. It is hoped that this study will foster work by other scholars and designers who are interested in exploring the ways in which water infrastructure can be exploited toward the future development of humane, ecologically responsible, and engaging civic environments. This is especially important as our world faces both critical water shortages and rising sea levels due to climate change.
Book Event to celebrate publication of "Rome: an Urban History from Antiquity to the Present" by Rabun Taylor, Katherine Rinne, and Spiro Kostof. The event will also honor the legacy of Prof. Spiro Kostof who taught at UC Berkeley from 1965 until his death in 1991. His former students, friends, and colleagues are especially welcome. We look forward to seeing you.
This is a guide to the iconography of William Kentridge’s Triumphs & Laments, the 500-meter-long frieze of colossal figures traced into the black accretions on the Tiber Embankments between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini in Rome in early Spring 2016: http://www.tevereterno.it/arts/triumphs-and-laments/. The guide was compiled at the request of Kristin Jones, artistic director of the project, and was initially part of a Guidebook cell phone app, which has since been discontinued.
Prior to compiling the guide texts, with generous help from dozens of colleagues and students, I had the immense pleasure of serving as Curator of Historical Research for Triumphs & Laments, overseeing the research group at John Cabot University which formulated the chronological database ('timeline') of images from the history of art, cinema, and journalism provided to William Kentridge to inspire his drawings for the frieze. Our research continued and augmented that of Andrea Biagioni and Sara Spizzichino of Tevereterno.
Please share these texts with friends, colleagues, and students. Writing the guide was our labor of love for Rome, for William Kentridge and his work, and for the joy of collective creativity that made Triumphs & Laments a reality.
NOTE: In the pdf version available online before May 20, 2017, the hyperlinks were inoperative. In the current Word document, they work.