Inter-National Rome

Mapping Collective Identities in Via Giulia

Via Giulia, commissioned in 1508 by Pope Julius II and designed by Donato Bramante, was intended as an artery connecting the city’s most important governmental institutions. One of several functions of the new axis was to channel and manage the pilgrims who crowded the city, especially on the occasion of Holy Years. Because of this, Via Giulia and its neighborhood were occupied  by the hospices, oratories, and churches of foreign communities, such as those built by the Florentine, Sienese, Neapolitan, Bolognese, Brescian, Catalan, and English "nations".

 

Starting from the groundbreaking book on Via Giulia by Salerno, Spezzaferro, and Tafuri (1973), this project will focus on the social and performative aspects resulting from the coexistence here of numerous foreign communities, and their impact on visual culture. The siting of foreign institutions within the specific topographical context of Via Giulia will be analyzed in relation to their appropriation of urban space for religious and charitable activities and the relative political implications. A thorough study of the networks of people involved in these institutions has the potential to unveil new insights about their administrative structure and their interaction with other institutions within and outside of Rome.

We are happy to start a dialogue with scholars who are investigating the foreign communities of Via Giulia. If you are interested, please feel free to contact us.

Participating projects

Gloria Antoni, Ph.D.
In proximity of concluding her doctoral research with a thesis on Jacopo Zucchi at the Università di Roma Tre, Gloria Antoni collaborates at the project Roma communis patria as an intern. Her research focuses on the Florentine community in Rome as well as its national churches. Within the project Roma inter-nazionale: topografia delle identità collettive di Via Giulia, she aims at exploring the relations between the confraternity of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and other associations with national character by examining their artistic commissions, processions, liturgical furnishings and sacred objects used on horseback between the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Ksenia Yurina, B.A.
Ksenia Yurina’s research focuses on the urbanistic project of Via Giulia as well as on the nationes’ major contributions to its development in the course of the sixteenth century. In particular, the project centers the Sienese and Neapolitan confraternities and their role as artistic commissioners in the respective churches. The results achieved in collaboration with the project Roma communis patria will be included in Ksenia Yurina’s master’s thesis, which is supervised by Prof. Elisabeth Oy-Marra at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz.

Publications

Giuseppe Bonaccorso, "La chiesa dei Ss. Faustino e Giovita dei Bresciani a Roma. La storia dell’area del palazzo dei Tribunali tra contese e progetti: da Bramante a Carlo Fontana", RIHA Journal 0239, in Constructing Nationhood in Early Modern Rome, ed. by Susanne Kubersky-Piredda and Tobias Daniels, Special Issue RIHA Journal, 0237–0243 (2020).

Maurizia Cicconi, "E il papa cambiò strada. Giulio II e Roma. Un nuovo documento sulla fondazione di via Giulia", Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana, 41 (2013/14) [2017], pp. 227–259.