Simply Rome: Images of Italy XXI

Attention! The audio recording contains profanity.

Arkady Ippolitov is the keeper of the cabinet of Italian engravings at the State Hermitage—an outstanding expert and refined connoisseur of Italian history and culture. The hero of his book is Rome, an astonishing city—the City of Great Style. On its pages, many characters appear: popes and emperors, the greatest artists and genius architects, enchanting beauties and irresistible adventurers—the brilliant retinue of the Eternal City. The easy grace of a talented writer—who also has enormous 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 alive. And they, too, become characters—with their own stories and destinies—yet this bright kaleidoscope of separate tales merges into a single narrative, which you can hardly call anything other than a novel.