Chapter 2 The Paradoxical Colosseum: A Mesocosm for Early Modern Rome
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Abstract
Pope Martin V’s return to Rome in 1420 jumpstarted an era of urban renewal that birthed some of the most spectacular projects of Renaissance Rome. However, this period coincided with the Little Ice Age as well as a number of geopolitical developments that challenged the popes’ desires to build Rome into the epicenter of a global faith. In the face of exceptional flood frequency, constant invasions, rampant spoliation of antiquities, and uneven papal control of urban politics, debates concerning urban renewal, the preservation of antiquities, and where the Colosseum fit into the urban landscape of early modern Rome underscore a larger struggle between competing ideologies regarding the material realities of a city dismantled by environmental fluctuations and political tensions. Despite its peripheral state outside of the medieval populated core, the Colosseum remained a reservoir of meaning both as evidence of the decline of Rome as a result of foreign invasions and natural disasters, as well as evidence of the past and potential greatness of Rome and the early modern Papacy. The Colosseum tells the larger story of urban renewal in Rome amid debates over confronting climate change and geopolitics as well as the overarching ideological goals of the Renaissance papacy. The Colosseum thus functions as a metaphor for the systematic removal of historic layers throughout Rome, and how geopolitics, environmental change, and historical consciousness become intertwined and informed tensions regarding Roman identity and urban renewal.