Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

In the late nineteenth century, an educated traveler to Rome carried this book in their pocket. Robert Burns, a distinguished archaeologist and scholar, distills his monumental study "Rome and the Campagna" into a portable companion for anyone who wanted to understand what they were seeing among the ruins. This is guidebook as intellectual adventure: Burns takes you through the Campagna's crumbling temples and fallen arches, situating each fragment within the sweep of Roman history. He provides just enough historical context to make the stones speak, without getting bogged down in academic speculation. What emerges is a vivid sense of how the ancient city once functioned, and how its ruins still shape the landscape around them. For the modern reader, the book holds particular charm. The Roman Forum lay unexcavated, overgrown with weeds and sheep grazing among the marbles. The Colosseum's interior was genuinely wild with vegetation. Burns writes with the precision of a scholar and the wonder of someone who understands that these ruins are not mere tourist attractions but living connections to a vanished world. If you've stood in Rome and wanted to truly see it, to understand the layers of history beneath your feet, this handbook remains an invaluable guide.