As time went on, power gradually
became concentrated in a handful of
families
, who swapped the top jobs,
including the papacy itself, between
them. Under the burgeoning power of
the pope, the city began to take on
a new aspect: churches were built,
the city's pagan monuments
rediscovered and preserved, and
artists began to arrive in Rome to
work on commissions for the latest
pope, who would invariably try to
outdo his predecessor's efforts with
ever more glorious self-aggrandizing
buildings and works of art.
This process reached a head
during the Renaissance ;
Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo
all worked in the city, on and off,
throughout their careers. The reigns
of Pope Julius II (1503-13),
and his successor the Medici pope, Leo
X (1513-22), were something of a
golden age: the city was at the
centre of Italian cultural and
artistic life and site of the
creation of great works of art like
Michelangelo's frescoes in the
Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanze in
the Vatican Palace and fine
buildings like the Villa Farnesina,
Palazzo Farnese and Palazzo Spada,
not to mention the commissioning of
a new St Peter's as well as any
number of other churches. The city
was once again at the centre of
things, and its population had
increased to 100,000. However, in
1527 all this was brought abruptly
to an end, when the armies of the
Habsburg monarch, Charles V, swept
into the city, occupying it - and
wreaking havoc - for a year, while
Pope Clement VII (1523-34)
cowered in the Castel Sant'Angelo.
The ensuing years were ones of
yet more restoration, and perhaps
because of this it's the seventeenth
century that has left the most
tangible impression on Rome today,
the vigour of the Counter-Reformation
throwing up huge sensational
monuments like the Gesų church that
were designed to confound the
scepticism of the new Protestant
thinking, and again using pagan
artefacts (like obelisks), not to
mention the ready supply of building
materials provided by the city's
ruins, in ever more extravagant
displays of wealth. The Farnese
pope, Paul III (1534-50), was
perhaps the most efficient at
quashing anti-Catholic feeling,
while, later, Pope Sixtus V
(1585-90) was perhaps the most
determined to mould the city in his
own image, ploughing roads through
the centre and laying out bold new
squares at their intersections. This
period also saw the completion of St
Peter's under Paul V
(1605-1621), and the ascendancy of
Gian Lorenzo Bernini as the city's
principal architect and sculptor
under the Barberini pope, Urban
VIII (1623-44) - a patronage
that was extended under the Pamphili
pope, Innocent X (1644-55).
