Michelangelo was in a sulk. It was the autumn of 1508 and he had just heard that the Pope had appointed a young upstart to decorate the Vatican. This was Raphael, just 25 years old and regarded as a marvel.
While Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel, the newcomer was to work on the adjoining apartments. Whose star would shine the brightest? Both egos were on a collision course: Michelangelo and Raphael were now rivals.
The genius
Excavations in Rome have uncovered an ancient burial complex that held an intact ceramic funerary urn containing bone fragments and a terracotta dog’s head statue.
Archaeologists were called in after workers laying pipes for utility firm Acea on the Via Luigi Tosti in the city’s Appio Latino quarter came across the buried tombs.
They would have once lined the Via Latina (literally, the ‘Latin Road’) which was one of the earliest-lain Roman roads and that runs south-east out from the
The first ladies of the world leaders attending the G20 summit in Rome today put on a stylish display as they arrived for a private visit to the Colosseum.
In a nod to sustainability ahead of husband Boris Johnson’s eco plea at COP26 tomorrow, pregnant Carrie Johnson recycled a red £59.99 Zara blazer worn earlier this month, which she coordinated with a matching skirt hired from Ibiza label De La Vali and Zara kitten heels.
Meanwhile the wife of Spanish
Is America akin to Rome in decline? Was Trump like Caligula? What can the Antonine plague tell us about our response to Covid? These are questions that have been asked of late, but they’re only recent iterations of a longstanding impulse: When a seeming paradigm shift occurs, contemporary commentators will look to ancient Rome for parallels, lessons, warnings. But what do we truly hope to reveal with these comparisons to Rome? And what do those hopes say about us? Mary
