Le guide storico-artistiche di Roma nell’Ottocento tra continuità e innovazione

Guidebooks were an extremely valuable tool to intellectuals or collectors, who have been referring to them since the 17th century. This essay will analyse Rome guidebooks starting from the end of the 18th century and onto the 19th century. Compared to the 17th and 18th centuries guidebooks, emphasis was placed on excavations, antiquarian investigations and museums. Renewed interest reserved to these topics surged from the new historical context, where philological studies and antiquarian dissertations were supported by restoration work and archaeological discoveries. Those same discoveries propelled a need to show antiquities in the new guidebooks in the form of drawings and figures, matching the modern figurative sensibility that saw antiquity as a «fonte di erudizione» and «indubitabile testimonianza della storia, e de’ costumi», as Carlo Fea stated in the Nuova descrizione di Roma Antica e Moderna (1820). Monuments descriptions in the 19th century guidebooks became shorter and more concise, appropriate to the time period, when travellers’ fruition also became faster. It marked a contrast to past guidebooks such as the Studio di Pittura, Scoltura, et Architettura (1674) by Filippo Titi and the Itinerario Istruttivo (1763) by Giuseppe Vasi, that still remained essential models and examples for later guidebooks.