For almost a thousand years, Rome held sway as the spiritual & artistic centre of the world. Hughes vividly recreates the ancient Rome of Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula, Cicero, Martial & Virgil. With the artistic blossoming of the Renaissance, he casts his unwavering critical eye over the great works of Raphael, Michelangelo & Brunelleschi, shedding new light on the Old Masters. In the seventeenth, eighteenth & nineteenth centuries, when Rome`s cultural predominance was assured, artists & tourists from all over Europe converged on the city. Hughes brilliantly analyses the defining works of Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rubens & Bernini. Hughes` Rome is a vibrant, contradictory, spectacular & secretive place; a monument both to human glory & human error. In equal parts loving, iconoclastic, enraged & wise, peopled with colourful figures & rich in unexpected details, ROME is an exhilarating journey through the story of one of the world`s most glorious cities.