A Literary Companion to Rome: Including Ten Walking Tours
by John Varriano
Book Summary Information
Author: John VarrianoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1995-05-15
ISBN: 0312131127
Number of pages: 278
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Book Reviews of A Literary Companion to Rome: Including Ten Walking Tours
Book Review: Fun, but not "impeccable"
Summary: 3 Stars
Varriano's book is indeed amusing, and a good literary introduction to a fascinating city. I would take issue, however, with previous reviews which characterize it as impeccably researched and footnoted: Varriano occasionally gets caught up in his own myths, and reports as true what he wants to be true. For example, the Casa dei Crescenzi (pp. 75-6) did belong to a patrician family called the Crescenzi, but it certainly never belonged to Cola di Rienzo (an attribution which first appears in Piranesi's etching in 1756, and was popularized by Bulwer-Lytton's purple novel of 1835). Nor was Cola di Rienzo primarily a "religious reformer", as Varriano describes him--he was a political demagogue who tried to re-establish the Roman republic in medieval Rome. To make the whole thing more confusing, Varriano cites the Cola story as true, but an earlier name for the house (the "house of Pilate") as "pure medieval fabrication". The book is interesting and covers the literary history of Rome widely, but it should not be taken as a reliable scholarly resource.
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