Just Rome. Images of Italy XXI

Arkady Ippolitov – the keeper of the Italian engraving cabinet at the State Hermitage, the greatest expert and connoisseur of Italian history and culture. The hero of his book is Rome, an astonishing city, the city of the Great Style. The pages feature a multitude of characters: popes and emperors, greatest artists and genius architects, charming beauties and irresistible adventurers – the brilliant retinue of the Eternal City. The effortless ease of the talented writer, who also possesses immense knowledge and impeccable taste, fills the pages with love and elegant irony. Under his pen, basilicas and palaces, squares and fountains, statues and paintings come to life. They also become characters – each with their own story, their own fate, but the entire colorful kaleidoscope of varied individual tales merges into a single narrative that can only be called a novel.