The Grand Tour

ESP: Este trabajo analiza críticamente la Galería Regional de Palazzo Abatellis en Palermo, centrándose en su arquitectura, evolución histórica y el proyecto de restauración museográfica llevado a cabo por Carlo Scarpa en los años 50. Tras reconstruir la historia del palacio, construido en el siglo XV como residencia privada y posteriormente transformado en convento y museo, se examinan las intervenciones de restauración, con especial atención al enfoque de Scarpa, quien supo combinar la conservación del edificio histórico con soluciones museográficas innovadoras. El documento explora también las principales salas expositivas, su diseño y la interacción entre el espacio arquitectónico y las obras de arte. Finalmente, se abordan los problemas actuales de gestión del museo, destacando las deficiencias en comunicación, servicios al visitante y acceso al patrimonio, y se sugieren estrategias para mejorar su accesibilidad y valorización. El estudio concluye con una reflexión sobre el papel de Palazzo Abatellis en la escena cultural contemporánea y los desafíos futuros para su conservación y promoción.

ITA: Il presente lavoro analizza criticamente la Galería Regional di Palazzo Abatellis a Palermo, con particolare attenzione alla sua architettura, alla sua evoluzione storica e al progetto di restauro museografico realizzato da Carlo Scarpa negli anni '50. Dopo una ricostruzione della storia del palazzo, costruito nel XV secolo come residenza privata e successivamente trasformato in convento e museo, si esaminano gli interventi di restauro, soffermandosi sul contributo di Scarpa, che ha saputo coniugare la conservazione dell’edificio storico con soluzioni museografiche moderne. Il documento esplora inoltre le principali sale espositive, il loro allestimento e la relazione tra lo spazio architettonico e le opere d'arte. Infine, vengono affrontate le problematiche legate alla gestione attuale del museo, evidenziando le criticità relative alla comunicazione, ai servizi per i visitatori e alla fruizione del patrimonio, suggerendo possibili strategie per migliorare l'accessibilità e la valorizzazione della collezione. Il lavoro si conclude con una riflessione sul ruolo di Palazzo Abatellis nella scena culturale contemporanea e sulle sfide future per la sua conservazione e promozione.

This article reviews the presence and movements of foreign travellers in Milan in the mid-nineteenth century, focusing on the cultural context of art collecting. Perceptions of the Milan region abroad are examined through a number of guides and illustrated digests aimed at foreign visitors and produced by local publishers such as Giovanni Pietro Giegler, Ferdinando Artaria, Bettalli and Vallardi. Along with the main landmarks, the importance of private palaces and their art galleries has also been researched. Among them are locations associated with some established names (the Archinto, Litta, Borromeo and Trivulzio families), as well as new entries such as the Poldi Pezzoli family. The sections of guidebooks devoted to the city’s antiquarian market were particularly significant within these publications, a study of which helps us to understand the unexpected dynamics of some emerging antique dealers’ careers. Emphasis is placed on case-studies, notably the important and remarkable example of Alfonso Reichmann, whose family owned a famous hotel at Porta Romana. Reichmann successfully engaged in the domestic and international art trade, dealing with foreign museums as well as with Italian institutions and collectors, including Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli.

Dit werk is de Duitstalige, bewerkte versie van het Franstalige proefschrift dat Christian Kühner in 2010 te Freiburg en aan de École des hautes études et sciences sociales te Parijs indiende. Centraal staat de rol van vriendschap onder Franse edelen aan het hof tussen circa 1620 en circa 1690 en in het bijzonder de rol van vriendschap in de politieke dynamiek aldaar. Als bronnen gebruikt Kühner vooral in de eerste persoon enkelvoud geschreven 'Selbst zeugnisse', waaronder correspondentie uit het archief van de familie Condé. De methode van deze cultuurhistorische studie is vooral ontleend aan de antropologie en sociologie. De auteur heeft voor een emische benadering van het begrip 'amitié' gekozen; hij geeft dan ook geen (etische) definitie vooraf van het begrip, maar haalt deze uit de contemporaine bronnen en praktijk. Kühner ontleedt aan de hand van correspondentie eerst het discours over vriendschap (representatie) en vervolgens, met behulp van meer narratieve 'Selbstzeugnisse', de praktijk. Zo kan hij aantonen dat 'amitié' geen eenduidige, beperkte betekenis had, maar vele betekenissen die elkaar overlapten. Vriendschap aan het hof was per definitie 'politiek'. Een onderscheid tussen publiek en privé werd niet gemaakt. Een ware-dat betekende een deugdzame-vriendschap stond au

Píldoras de arte: investigaciones recientes sobre la historia del arte clásico y moderno es una actividad de divulgación científica, cuyo objetivo es acercar a la ciudadanía los resultados de las investigaciones de dos de los profesores del Departamento de Historia del Arte de la UNED: David Ojeda y Pilar Diez del Corral. Para ello los dos investigadores impartirán una serie conferencias en el mes de diciembre de 2024 en el centro asociado de la UNED en Segovia. En ellas se ofrecerán resúmenes detallados de los avances principales de sus investigaciones en torno a tres temáticas bien diferenciadas: la representación de los mitos griegos en la cerámica ática (conferencia no. 1); el retrato romano como reflejo histórico-social (conferencia no. 3); el estudio, la documentación y la atribución del dibujo del siglo XVIII (conferencias nos. 2 y 4).

The history of Italian journeys in the era of the Grand Tour between the 16th and the beginning of the 19th century has been amply explored in critical literature in recent decades. However, in spite of the number of studies on this fascinating cultural fashion, there are still some areas that have seldom been dealt with. Among these are the many writings left by travelers from Eastern Europe, written in languages little known by Western scholars and therefore only rarely the subject of research. This is unfortunate for they are full of information that would be precious for history, especially art history. An interesting example is the journey of the very young protagonist of the present essay, Countess Anna Tolstaja, who arrived in Italy as the final stop in her Grand Tour. The present essay focuses on her stay in the Bourbon kingdom, a favorite desti- nation of Russian travelers in the second half of the 18th century.

En 1776, au moment où Gibbon publie le premier tome de Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Louis Ducros (1748-1810), un jeune peintre vaudois de 28 ans, traverse l'Italie pour rejoindre Rome 2 . Sa formation se résume à peu de choses : quelques leçons de dessin, beaucoup de copies de maîtres anciens, des croquis d'après nature à l'aquarelle, quelques notions de gravure à l'eau-forte. Ne pratiquant que le paysage, genre encore considéré comme mineur, Ducros est privé de commandes religieuses, réservées aux peintres catholiques. Il réalise alors que son salut réside auprès des étrangers de passage dans la Ville éternelle, friands de « souvenirs » de leur voyage en Italie. Rome avait consolidé sa position de capitale des arts après la divulgation par la gravure des découvertes archéologiques qui se multiplient en Italie dès le milieu du XVIII e siècle (Herculanum et Pompéi, Paestum), des découvertes qui intéressent de près les Vaudois 3 . Philosophes, écrivains, savants et intellectuels font le voyage d'Italie, avec un arrêt obligé dans la Ville éternelle. Les gazettes rapportent régulièrement le séjour des aristocrates et des souverains de l'Europe dans cette étape suprême du Grand Tour. Marchands, collectionneurs, guides de toutes nationalités convergent vers Rome pour y faire fortune. Et certains deviennent célèbres, comme Thomas Jenkins (1722-1798) 4 , banquier et marchand d'art qui joua également un rôle diplomatique non négligeable. Ou encore James Byres (1734-1817) 5 , un architecte écossais, marchand et cicérone, qui commence sa carrière en guidant Gibbon dans la cité italienne 6 . Donnant le ton dans les milieux anglo-saxons de Rome, il expose dès la fin des années 1770 dans sa maison à la Strada Paolina (aujourd'hui Via del Babuino), à côté des maîtres anciens, une vingtaine d'oeuvres d'artistes contemporains, parmi lesquels Giovanni Battista Piranèse, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Angelika Kauffmann et Louis Ducros.

ÖZ
Susan Sontag'ın 1993'te kaleme aldığı tiyatro oyunu Alice in Bed (Alice Yatakta), tarihi bir figürü, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda yaşayıp aldığı ayrıcalıklı eğitime ve sahip olduğu yaşam standartlarına rağmen kendini gerçekleştirme fırsatı bulamayan, romancı ağabeyi Henry James ve diğer meşhur ağabeyi psikolog ve düşünür William James'in gölgesinde kalan Alice James'i konu alır. Alice James'in ölümünden sonra yayımlanan günlüklerinden faydalanarak bu oyunu yazan Sontag, ömrünün çoğunu hastalıklarla boğuşarak geçiren Alice James'e Londra'daki hasta odasında, artık yatağa bağımlı olduğu zamanlara odaklanarak ses ve hayat verir. İki sahnesi tamamen Alice'in zihninde geçen oyunun altıncı sahnesi, hayalî bir Roma seyahatini konu alır. Edebiyatta başlı başına bir tür olarak değerlendirilebilecek hayalî seyahat anlatılarına ayrıcalıklı bir biçimde dahil olan bu sahne, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda toplumsal açıdan son derece güvencesiz bir konumda olan kadının özerk bir kimlik inşası çabasına işaret eder.
Anahtar Kelimeler: hayalî seyahat, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda kadın ve seyahat,
Büyük Tur, flâneuse, psikocoğrafya
ABSTRACT
Susan Sontag’s 1993 play Alice in Bed focuses on Alice James, a historical figure from the 19th century who, despite having a privileged education and lifestyle, was unable to fulfill her own dreams. She lived in the shadow of her novelist brother Henry James and her other famous brother, psychologist, and thinkerWilliam James.
Drawing from Alice James’ diaries published posthumously, Sontag breathes life into her, concentrating on the times when she was bedridden in her sickroom in London, having struggled with illness for most of her life. The sixth scene of the play is set entirely in Alice’s mind and depicts an imaginary journey to Rome. This scene can be considered as a distinct genre in literature, is privileged in narratives of imaginary travel, and points to the efforts a socially very precarious woman in the 19th century made to construct an autonomous identity.
Keywords: imaginary travel, woman and travel in the 19th century, The Grand Tour, flâneuse, psychogeography

This book collects essays on writings by erudite travellers who explored the Mediterranean countries in search of classical antiquities between the 17th and the 19th centuries, but encountered the art of the Middle Ages, nearly always unexpectedly. The analysis of this literature allows to evaluate the diverse perceptions of medieval heritage, particularly in Southern Italy and the lands of modern-day Croatia and Greece – considered prime destinations for the on-site study of Antiquity besides
Rome. The texts are scrutinised from the perspective of the vocabulary employed by the authors, so to evaluate the interpretative categories they adopted in the examination and classification of the art and architecture from the Middle Ages, before history of medieval art was developed as an academic discipline during the 19th century.

Contributions by Maria Giulia Aurigemma, Xavier Barral i Altet, Antonio Brucculeri, Ioanna Christoforaki, Damiano Delle Fave, Stefano D’Ovidio, Damiana Di Bonito, Laura Giacomini, Vinni Lucherini, Alicia Miguélez, Simone Piazza, Chiara Piva, Ilaria Serati, Ana Šverko, Alessandro Taddei, Bella Takushinova, Antonino Tranchina, Nicoletta Usai, Maria Aimé Villano.

The Education of Luigi Trezza: Classicism and Food for Thought on Medieval Architecture
"Alla gotica" Architecture: The Pragmatic Interpretation of Luigi Trezza Compared with the Historical-Critical Consideration of his Contemporaries
Medieval Architectures Interpreted by a Classicist Architect

Starting from an ongoing research project about artist mobility in the post-pandemic scenario it is necessary to start considering the possible impact of the big change underway in the field of artist mobility and the key differences between digital and physical residencies. It is important to consider how hybrid formats are reshaping the curatorial practice, changing the role played by art residencies in local and global cultural ecosystems. Thanks to the intrinsic diversity of its formats the experience of Artist residencies can be described as a learning environment, a
“mixed reality” transformative experience, a testground that contributes to redefining the role of contemporary artists in contemporary society.

Il Museo nei libri
a cura di Giovanna Capitelli, Silvia Cecchini, Mauro Vincenzo Fontana (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Roma Tre) e Ilaria Miarelli Mariani (Direzione Musei Civici di Roma Capitale)
marzo-maggio 2024

Quattro appuntamenti, il sabato mattina, aperti agli studenti dell’Università e dei licei, ai possessori della MIC card, e alla cittadinanza tutta previo acquisto del biglietto del museo, per riflettere e discutere del rapporto tra il Museo e la società contemporanea. Si parlerà di libri di recente pubblicazione e si utilizzeranno varie forme di mediazione: l’intervista, il workshop, la lettura partecipata, la presentazione.

Sabato, 20 aprile 2024, dalle 10:30-12:30 Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi, Piazza San Pantaleo, Sala Tenerani
Giovanna Capitelli, Vanda Lisanti, llaria Miarelli Mariani dialogano a partire del volume di Graham Black, Museums and the Challenge of Change. Old Institutions in a New World, Routledge, 2021

In the decades after the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1730s and 1740s, the two towns attracted the attention of many European tourists, scholars, and litterati. Although they were seen as primary examples of Greco-Roman culture and of the way people lived in an ancient urban environment, the remains of their architecture aroused much less attention. This paper explores why architects did not view these sites, and Pompeii in particular, as a source of inspiration until well into the 19th century.

Fra tanti edifici incontrati in viaggio tra Firenze e Pisa, i viaggiatori stranieri – prevalentemente francesi, ma anche inglesi e tedeschi – si soffermano sulla Madonna del Pozzo, descrivendola o disegnandola nel suo stato effettivo o perfezionandone le forme secondo il gusto dell’osservatore. Il piccolo corpus, composto da una decina di disegni, mostra l’interesse per i caratteri rinascimentali del monumento e ne accompagna la storia costruttiva, ben prima che se ne occupassero i critici nostrani.

During the interwar years, Leo Faust worked in Paris as a correspondent for several Dutch newspapers, author of multiple tourist-guides, and owner of a Dutch restaurant. He cleverly combined these roles in order to convince potential tourists that they could rely on him to safely guide them through the Parisian night life. This article analyses Faust’s books on Paris and his advertisements in the press with the aim of reconstructing the kind of touristic experience he offered to Dutch visitors in Paris, and to establish how his representation of the City of Light taps into the wider cultural imaginary.

Questo libro approfondisce un aspetto poco indagato del Grand Tour. Esso prende in esame le tappe italiane, e in particolare napoletane, di alcuni viaggiatori russi che si avventurarono nell’Europa dell’Ovest desiderosi di aggiornare la loro cultura artistica e arricchire le loro collezioni divenute status symbol nella terra degli zar. Un bell’incontro tra due culture lontane tra loro nello spazio e nel tempo.

Collana: MO.DO. (Monumenta Documenta), fondata da R. Cioffi e diretta da N. Barrella

Il workshop Pubblici dei primi musei pubblici. II. Discorsi letterari (XVIII-XIX secolo) è parte integrante del progetto di ricerca Visibility Reclaimed. Experiencing Rome’s First Public Museums (1733-1870). An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective (FNS 100016_212922). Il workshop è il secondo di una serie di tre seminari work-in-progress e approfondisce l’esame delle narrative letterarie
fondamentali per comprendere le esperienze di visita dei primi musei pubblici. La letteratura odeporica e periegetica ha rappresentato una fonte da tempo privilegiata per indagare l’origine dei primi musei pubblici e
le pratiche di accesso alle collezioni pubbliche e private in Europa. Tuttavia, alla luce di studi più recenti, volti ad approfondire la storia materiale del museo e l’incontro dei pubblici con le istituzioni, le fonti letterarie più generalmente intese meritano una rilettura sia in termini metodologici che critici. Nel momento in cui i musei hanno cercato di definire e coinvolgere i loro pubblici, la letteratura è infatti spesso diventata sia uno specchio che un modello, riflettendo e plasmando le percezioni della società. Privilegiando una prospettiva interdisciplinare e transazionale, il workshop invita ad approfondire la percezione e l’esperienza materiale dei musei, sottolineando l’interazione tra i discorsi letterari e le opere d’arte, le collezioni, l’esposizione, lo spazio, l’evoluzione delle norme istituzionali e gli stessi pubblici “raccontati” nel museo tra
XVIII e XIX secolo.

Anyone who doubts that a society's art market reveals its underlying values need only consider the case of Inigo Philbrick, the high-flying young dealer who sold investors overlapping shares of the same blue-chip contemporary works and who was recently apprehended in Vanuatu. The present volume boasts no one quite so colourful, though it too concerns a moment in which the business side of art acquired new prominence. Based on an international congress held at Rome's Palazzo Barberini, the anthology's ten chapters consider diverse facets of art's production, circulation, and recirculation in early modern Rome, unfortunately not all centred on the time and place announced in the title. This is a limitation in a study of art markets, which are typically localized and responsive to shifting conditions. While less focused than one would wish, the collection nonetheless illuminates a key phase in the market's development while contextualizing our own age of glossy magazines, glamorous fairs, 'specullectors', and illicit trafficking of cultural property. Both symposium and anthology reflect the efforts of Paolo Coen, professor of the history of art at the Università degli Studi di Teramo, to bring to Rome something of the economic perspective long established in studies of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Specifically, he aims to rehabilitate a century that got short shrift from Francis Haskell, whose 1963 Patrons and Painters passed from seventeenth-century Rome to eighteenth-century Venice in response to a perceived collapse of economic and artistic leadership beginning under the Chigi Pope, Alexander VII (1655-1667). Coen prefers the more balanced view offered by historians like Franco Venturi and the contributors to the 2000 exhibition Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century in Philadelphia; like them, he reads 'the passage between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Rome in terms of continuity, albeit still keeping some indisputable differences' (pp. 4-5). Coen's own study of the city's eighteenth-century painting trade, published in 2010 with an extensive documentary appendix of wills, inventories, estimates, export licenses, sales catalogues, and period correspondence, contributed significantly to mapping this 1 Il mercato dei quadri a Roma nel diciottesimo secolo: la domanda, l'offerta e la circolazione delle opere in un grande centro artistico europeo. 2 vols., Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010. The covers of both publications are illustrated with details of Panini's imaginary picture gallery of

This study presents an analysis of 82 accounts of travel in the United Provinces, written by French travellers who made their journeys between 1748 and 1795. In this period Italy, Britain but also Holland were very popular with French people travelling abroad. The Republic still served as a refuge for those threatened by absolute government or harassed by the judiciary. Moreover Dutch universities and well-established trading firms continued to attract French students and apprentices. In the second half of the eighteenth century increasing number of tourists set out on the journey to Holland, keen to visit a country reputed to be very special. Lovers of fine arts were curious to see the paintings of Flemish and Dutch masters, who were then becoming fashionable. Those interested in politics and infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment could have additional profit from the journey by seeing for themselves one of the few surviving republics of Europe.... Zie: Summary

Aracne editrice S.r.l. via Raffaele Garofalo 133 /A-B 00173 Roma La selezione degli articoli pubblicati in Quaestio. Studi e ricerche per il disegno e la documentazione dei beni culturali prevede la procedura di revisione e valutazione di un comitato di referee (blind peer review). Ogni articolo viene sottoposto allʹattenzione di almeno due revisori scelti in base alle loro specifiche competenze. I nomi dei revisori sono resi noti con periodicità annuale. Gli autori interessati ad inviare proposte di pubblicazione troveranno tutte le indicazioni necessarie nel sito www.quaestio.biz dove vengono riproposti anche gli indici di tutti i numeri editi e i relativi editoriali. Il materiale inviato alla redazione non verrà comunque restituito. The selection of articles published in Quaestio. Studi e ricerche per il disegno e la documentazione dei beni culturali is subject to revision and assessment by a blind peer review. Each article is examined by at least two reviewers based on their specific expertise. Names of the reviewers will be published annually. Authors interested in sending a proposal for publication will find all the necessary information on the website www.quaestio.biz which also includes an index of all published issues and editorials. All material send to the editorial department will not be returned.

This lecture traces the changing experience of visiting Pompeii through the nineteenth century. It argues against the standard idea that there was a shift over the century from a Romantic view of the site to a more archaeological approach (which stressed the reconstruction of Roman daily life). It suggests instead that two conflicting visions of the city ("city of the dead"/"city of the living") were always held in tension.

The aim is to study how the travelers crossing the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean, between the “Grand Tour en Orient” and the Orient Express, were able to apprehend these countries, their inhabitants, and their past. Our aim is to explore the social representations of travelers, as well as those of the populations they visited. Without limiting ourselves to reproducing the classic schemes for understanding these discourses, indebted to Edward Saïd, we shall historicize, contextualize and define these ambivalent perceptions according to the geopolitical considerations, ideological orientations, and personal affinities of those who produced these discourses.  In parallel, we'd like to study the sociability offered by ships and trains, such as the Orient-Express and its successor, the Simplon-Orient-Express, as well as its Asian extension leading to Iraq and Egypt, the Taurus-Express.

Book Review, The Burlington Magazine, 165, May 2023, by Marco Iuliano:
Books
Seventy years after a groundbreaking exhibition on early photography
in Rome, scholarship on the subject continues to advance.

The Idea of Italy: Photography and the British Imagination, 1840–1900 Edited by Maria Antonella Pelizzari and Scott Wilcox. 288 pp. incl. 180 col. ills. (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, and Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2022), £40. ISBN 978–0–300–26383–1.

In Light of Rome: Early Photography in the Capital of the Art World, 1842–1871 By John F. McGuigan Jr and Frank H. Goodyear III. 272 pp. incl. 135 col. ills. (Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick MA, and Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA, 2023), £60.95. ISBN 978–0–271–09488–5.

Exhibition Review of "In Light of Rome: Early Photography in the Capital of the Art World, 1842–1871" held at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 8 December 2022–4 June 2023, written by Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe, 23 April 2023, Visual Arts Section, N2

CENTO STUDI AMERICANI, ROMA ACADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROMA, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE DIPARTIMENTO PAU, UNIVERSITÀ MEDITERRANEA DI REGGIO CALABRIA
AMERICAN LATIUM: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour
Proceedings of the International Conference
Edited by
Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe
Centro Studi Americani Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove 7-8 June 2018

In 1773, James Bowdoin III (1752-1811) and Ward Nicholas Boylston (1747-1828), both from Boston, set sail for Italy, where they devoted several months to following the prescribed route on the Grand Tour. Bowdoin was the son of a merchant who was later elected governor of Massachusetts and also a founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Boylston was connected to several wealthy merchant families in the city. Boylston kept an extensive diary of their trip, documenting dinners at the homes of various dignitaries and visits to monuments, churches, and major art collections. Their tour began in Naples, where they frequently attended gatherings at the residence of Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803), and then moved to Rome under the guidance of James Byres (1734-1817), the noted Scottish art dealer. Although no records of purchases have been traced during this trip, Bowdoin refers to paintings in letters to his family and it is likely that he bought works that would become the basis of his art collection. The collection, donated to the college he founded in Maine in 1794, includes what is almost certainly the first group of old master drawings brought to America. Through the letters written by both gentlemen, as well as Boylston’s diary, we can reconstruct the development of Bowdoin’s ideas on art during the trip and how this affected his selection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture for what would become one of the earliest influential university art museums.

The Kingdom of Sicily Image Database uses new media technologies to reframe our understanding of medieval Europe by focusing on the role of the built environment for the formation of state identity in the medieval Kingdom of Sicily ruled by Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Aragonese dynasties (950-1420). The theme is important for two reasons: the significance of South Italy as a prototype of multicultural state formation and the highly fragmentary (war bombardment, earthquakes, urban transformation) state of the sites that played a central role in the power structures of this new state. A comprehensive database of historical images of monuments and cities (prints, drawings, maps, photographs, etc.) made by scholars, artists and travellers from the 15th to the 20th centuries, can enable scholars and the public to recover the appearance of the landscape, of cities, and of individual monuments prior to radical renovations or destructions. An interdisciplinary research team is conducting a...

At the end of the 8th century BC Greek people from Achaia founded Sybaris in the alluvial plain between the courses of the Sybaris and Krathis rivers. The city became a symbol of luxury and richness among the ancients before being destroyed in 510 BC. The Panhellenic Thurii (444 BC) and the Latin colony of Copia (194 BC) were then founded in the same place. After the fall of Roman Empire, the plain, once famous for its fertility, became unhealthy and swampy: Copia was abandoned and its buildings covered by water and mud. During long centuries of oblivion, the area became an immense swamp, the rivers changed their course several times. Water and mud covered the ruins and only the memory of the three cities remained. In the eighteenth century, just near the mouth of the two rivers, ancient vestiges were visible that historians, geographers and travelers of the Grand Tour had no doubts believe the ruins of Sybaris. After the unification of Italy, a large and expensive research program began through which archaeologist tried, in vain, to uncover the remains of the ancient polis. Only in 1932, after the reclamation of the plain, Umberto Zanotti Bianco, an intellectual disliked by the Fascist regime, was able to identify, in the area now known as Parco del Cavallo, the remains of Copia built on the place already occupied by Thurii and Sybaris.

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Achter de façade van de Hollandse stad is een bewerking van Geert Medema's doctoraal proefschrift 'In zo goede order als in eenige stad in Holland. Het stedelijk bouwbedrijf in Holland in de achttiende eeuw' dat hij in 2008 aan de Universiteit Utrecht verdedigde. Geert Medema onderzocht daarbij hoe zeven Hollandse steden-Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, Gouda, Rotterdam en Schiedam-in de achttiende eeuw hun stedelijke identiteit opbouwden en in stand trachtten te houden. Een duidelijke argumentatie voor de keuze van deze zeven steden ontbreekt, maar in de loop van het betoog wordt duidelijk dat elk van deze steden in de bestudeerde periode een stagnerende economische ontwikkeling kende maar er tegelijkertijd veel voor over had om de façade van de welvarende burgerstad hoog te houden. Daarbij werd sterk ingezet op het zoeken naar een efficiëntere werking van de stedelijke bouworganisaties om de bestaande voorzieningen in stand te kunnen houden. De vormgeving van de publieke ruimte had immers een directe weerslag op de beeldvorming van de stad, haar bestuur, haar samenleving en vooral haar imago van autonome, welvarende en vooraanstaande burgerstad. Na een inleidend hoofdstuk waarin het 'beeld van de stad' wordt geschetst aan de hand van achttiende-eeuwse stadsbeschrijvingen en reisverhalen valt de publicatie inhoudelijk uit elkaar in tweede delen. In een eerste deel (hoofdstuk 2 tot en met 4) gaat Geert Medema in op de (efficiëntie van) de achttiende-eeuwse stedelijke bouworganisatie. Hij biedt een duidelijk overzicht van de drie niveaus-het bestuurlijke, ambtelijke en uitvoerende niveau-en opteert daarbij uitdrukkelijk voor het gebruik van de historische functiebenamingen om de verschillen en gelijkenissen tussen de zeven steden in kaart te brengen. Op basis van een diepteanalyse van de 'werkvoorschriften' stelt hij dat de verhoudingen en verantwoordelijkheden tussen de drie niveaus steeds nauwkeuriger geformuleerd werden en aanleiding gaven tot een striktere afbakening van verantwoordelijkheden. Om de efficiëntie van het bouwbedrijf te vergroten, werden diverse initiatieven genomen waaronder het aanpassen van de bestuurlijke en ambtelijke organisatie of het volledig uitbesteden-via openbare aanbestedingen-van alle uitvoerende taken aan particulieren om zo loon-en materiaalkosten te besparen. Het zou echter duidelijk worden dat deze laatste optie geen garantie voor meer efficiëntie bood, waardoor de bestaande zeventiende-eeuwse organisatiestructuur op lange termijn bepalend bleef. Naast het formele en feitelijke stedelijke bouwbeleid, komen ook de betrokken actoren duidelijk aan bod. In het vierde hoofdstuk wordt specifiek ingegaan op de theoretische en praktische expertise van de diverse werknemers van het bouwbedrijf. Daarbij wordt aangetoond dat ook in deze achttiende-eeuwse steden steeds meer belang werd gehecht aan theoretische