Mechanical Tourism: The Case of the Capitoline Hill

The Capitoline Hill was first highlighted as a key site for the lover of antiquities in medieval literary descriptions of Rome. These "guides"--inaccurate, unillustrated, devoid of maps, and available in only a small number of manuscript copies--seem to us hilariously different from those on which we rely today. During our panel's visit to the Capitoline Hill, I will pose some questions about the history of this reliance.

Between the age of the manuscript guide and the world wide web, new instruments for measuring the topography and monuments of a city and the new technologies for printing images brought about a media revolution that transformed the expectations and experiences of both real and virtual tourists. In the case of representations of Rome, we will see that the Capitoline Hill was of particular importance to the new mechanically informed tourist.

• Ackerman, James. "The Capitoline Hill." In Architecture of Michelangelo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Reprinted in Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991.
• Saxl, F. "The Capitol During the Renaissance--A Symbol of the Imperial Idea." In Lectures. London: The Warburg Institute, 1957.

Piazza del Campidoglio from Gamucci, Le antichità della città di Roma, 1569	Piazza del Campidoglio from Marliani, Urbis Romae Topographia, 1588
Forum seen from Campidoglio from Scamozzi, Discorsi sopra l'antichità di Roma, 1583	Forum seen from Campidoglio from Marliani, Urbis Romae Topographia, 1588
Piazza del Campidoglio from Totti, Ritratto di Roma Moderna, 1652	Piazza del Campidoglio from Rossini, Il Mercurio Errante , 1760

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