Get Ready for Rome

Apr 18 2024 100 ep. 18 mins 19
Get Ready for Rome Podcast artwork

Get Ready for Rome helps the thoughtful traveler prepare to visit the Eternal City by introducing the city’s main monuments and the sometimes acrimonious dialogue they imply. Add value to your visit to Rome by getting to know in advance the ideas and history that stand behind St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel and other familiar but put poorly understood sites of one of the world’s greatest cities.

  Society & Culture
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108. From the Cattle Market to the Palatine and from Aeneas to Romulus

Apr 18 2024 15 mins  
After two episodes on the Forum Boarium, we move up to the Palatine Hill. At the same time, we move from Rome’s distant prehistory and Aeneas to its founding by his descendant Romulus, the son of Mars. Later still, Caesar and his adopted son Augustus presented Aeneas and Romulus as precursors of the Caesars.

107. The Two Temples of the Forum Boarium

Apr 05 2024 14 mins  
The two temples in the Forum Boarium as illustrations of Rome’s cultural flux over the ages.

106. The Forum Boarium and Rome's Mythical Prehistory

Mar 27 2024 17 mins  
There is scant evidence regarding the prehistory of Rome, but the Romans supplied this defect by handing down and codifying engaging myths. Today we visit the Forum Boarium, where Rome’s distant ancestors met and began to form the people from whom the Romans would descend, or so at least Livy and Virgil tell us.

105. The Making of Modern Italy

Mar 17 2024 13 mins  
Today is March 17, the anniversary of the proclamation of the birth or making of modern Italy. It seems strange to me that this anniversay is largely overlooked, so I invite listeners to think for a moment about its meaning.

104. Where are we?

May 02 2023 17 mins  
If the Sistine Chapel reflected the moral vision of Christian Rome, is there any such coherent view in Modern Rome of how we humans should understand our purpose and live our lives?

103. A Pope's View of a Modern Problem

Jan 17 2023 21 mins  
Popes have frequently attacked the moral, political, and intellectual developments that gave birth to modern Italy. On the occasion of the death of Pope Benedict, we today review his controversial Regensburg Address to see what it says about modern Rome.

102. The Secularism of Modern Rome

Dec 29 2022 22 mins  
We return today to the "secular" or non-religious character of modern Rome in order to see more clearly how much the Rome of the People has changed from the Rome of the Popes.

101. Michelangelo's Last Judgment

Dec 15 2022 23 mins  
Today we introduce Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," his vast fresco painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

100. The Four Corners of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling

Dec 01 2022 24 mins  
The four Pendentives of Michelangelo's Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel represent four different dramatic stories from the Old Testament. What are these stories, and what do they teach?

99. The Subjects Represented on Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling

Nov 17 2022 24 mins  
We know that Michelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was an extraordinary achievement, but what subjects does he represent and what teaching do they convey?