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Presenting a "warts and all" view of the Italian character, Luigi Barzini's The Italians should almost be required reading for anyone contemplating a trip to Rome. It's lively, fun, and not at all academic.

Edward Gibbon's 1776 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published in six volumes, but Penguin issues a manageable abridgement. This work has been hailed as one of the greatest histories ever written. No one has ever captured the saga of the glory that was Rome the way Gibbon did.

One of the best books on the long history of the papacy -- detailing its excesses, triumphs, defeats, and most vivid characters -- is Michael Walsh's An Illustrated History of the Popes: Saint Peter to John Paul II.

In the 20th century, the most fascinating period in Italian history was the rise and fall of fascism, as detailed in countless works. One of the best biographies of Il Duce is Denis M. Smith's Mussolini: A Biography. Another subject that's always engrossing is the Mafia, which is detailed, godfathers and all, in Pino Arlacchi's Mafia Business: The Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

William Murray's The Last Italian: Portrait of a People is his second volume of essays on his favorite subject -- Italy, its warm people, and its astonishing civilization. The New York Times called it "a lover's keen, observant diary of his affair."

Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Vita Italiana of an American Journalist, by Jack Casserly, is the entertaining and affectionate memoir of a former bureau chief in Rome from 1957 to 1964. He captures the spirit of Italia sparita (bygone Italy) with such celebrity cameos as Maria Callas and the American expatriate singer Bricktop.

Art & Architecture

From the Colosseum to Michelangelo, T. W. Potter provides one of the best accounts of the art and architecture of Rome in Roman Italy, which is also illustrated. Another good book on the same subject is Roman Art and Architecture, by Mortimer Wheeler.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration, by Michael Hirst and others, uses nearly 300 color photographs to illustrate the lengthy and painstaking restoration of Michelangelo's 16th-century frescoes in the Vatican.

Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists Vols. I and II is a collection of biographies of the great artists from Cimabue up to Vasari's 16th-century contemporaries. It's an interesting read, full of anecdotes and Vasari's theories on art practice. For a more modern art history take, the indispensable tome is Frederick Hartt's History of Italian Renaissance Art. For an easier and more colorful introduction, get Michael Levey's Early Renaissance and High Renaissance.

Fiction & Biography

No one does it better than John Hersey in his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bell for Adano, a frequently reprinted classic. It's a well-written and disturbing story of the American invasion of Italy.

One of the best-known Italian writers published in England is Alberto Moravia, born in 1907. His neorealistic novels are immensely entertaining and are read around the world. Notable works include Roman Tales, The Woman of Rome, and The Conformist.

For the wildly entertaining books on ancient Rome, detailing its most flamboyant personalities and excesses, read I, Claudius and Claudius the God, both by Robert Graves. Borrowing from the histories of Tacitus and Suetonius, the series begins at the end of the Emperor Augustus's reign and ends with the death of Claudius in the 1st century A.D. In 1998, the Modern Library placed I, Claudius at no. 14 on its list of the 100 finest English-language novels published this century.

Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series is rich, fascinating, and historically detailed, bringing to vivid life such greats as Gaius Marius (The First Man in Rome), Lucius Cornelius Sulla (The Grass Crown), and Julius Caesar (Fortune's Favorites and Caesar's Women).

Michelangelo, a Biography, by George Bull, is a well-written scholarly take on the life of the artist, penned by a Renaissance expert and one of the most respected translators of Italian classic literature.

Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy, filmed with Charlton Heston playing Michelangelo, is the easiest to read and the most pop version of the life of this great artist. Heston views it as his greatest role and still tries to keep Michelangelo from coming out of the closet.

Many other writers have tried to capture the peculiar nature of Italy. Notable works include Italo Calvino's The Baron in the Trees, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View, Henry James's The Aspern Papers, Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard, Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover, and Mark Helprin's underappreciated masterwork, A Soldier of the Great War.

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Rome Italy Tourism: Recommended Books

Recommended Books

Rome Travel & Vacation Deals

Rome Travel Deals