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Rome in the Renaissance: How Popes Rebuilt the Eternal City

Explore Rome during the Renaissance, from the papal building program to the construction of St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the city's transformation into a cultural capital.

Rome in the Renaissance: How Popes Rebuilt the Eternal City

Rome in the Renaissance was a city in transformation. For centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Eternal City had been a shadow of its former self — a collection of crumbling ruins inhabited by a small, struggling population. But beginning in the 15th century, a succession of ambitious popes set out to restore Rome to its ancient grandeur, and in the process they turned it into the cultural capital of Europe. The Rome we know today — with its magnificent churches, its grand piazzas, its vast papal palaces, and its breathtaking art — is in large measure a creation of the Renaissance.

A City in Ruins

The Rome that the early Renaissance popes inherited was, by all accounts, a shambles. The ancient city had been sacked repeatedly: by the Visigoths in 410, by the Vandals in 455, and most devastatingly by the imperial troops in 1527. The population had shrunk to perhaps 20,000 or 30,000, a fraction of its ancient size. Sheep grazed in the Forum. Marble from the Colosseum had been burned for lime. The great aqueducts were broken. Malaria was endemic in the low-lying parts of the city.

Yet the ruins themselves were a constant source of inspiration. Artists, architects, and humanists came to Rome to study the surviving monuments — the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the columns of the Forum, the triumphal arches — and to imagine the city as it had been. The rediscovery of classical Rome, both physically and intellectually, was central to the Renaissance project.

The Return from Avignon

The papacy had been absent from Rome for much of the 14th century, residing in Avignon under French influence. The return of the popes to Rome in 1376, under Pope Gregory XI, was a major turning point. The Great Schism (1378–1417), during which rival popes claimed the office in Rome and Avignon, complicated the papacy’s return, but by the 15th century Rome was once again the seat of the Catholic Church.

The early 15th century was a period of modest rebuilding. Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455), a humanist scholar himself, began the systematic restoration of the city. He repaired churches, restored aqueducts, and founded the Vatican Library, gathering manuscripts from across Europe. He also began the demolition of the old St. Peter’s Basilica, a structure that had stood for over a thousand years, to make way for the new.

The Building Program of the Popes

The transformation of Rome accelerated dramatically in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, driven by a succession of ambitious, sometimes controversial popes. The most important were part of the broader history of the Italian Renaissance, which had its origins in cities like Florence and Venice:

  • Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484), who built the Sistine Chapel (named for him), the first major Renaissance building in Rome, and who reorganized the Vatican Library.
  • Pope Julius II (1503–1513), the “Warrior Pope,” who was the great patron of the High Renaissance in Rome. He commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael to fresco his private apartments, and Bramante to begin the new St. Peter’s Basilica.
  • Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who continued the patronage of Raphael and Michelangelo, and who commissioned the destruction of the old St. Peter’s to make way for the new.
  • Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), another Medici, who commissioned Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and who presided over the catastrophic Sack of Rome in 1527.
  • Pope Paul III (1534–1549), who finally brought the Council of Trent to a successful conclusion, reformed the Roman Curia, and continued the patronage of Michelangelo.

The Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel, built between 1473 and 1481 under Sixtus IV, is one of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture. The plan, derived from the Temple of Solomon as described in the Old Testament, is a simple rectangle with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Its proportions, ornament, and construction are sober and elegant, more like a classical temple than a medieval church.

The chapel was originally decorated with frescoes by a team of leading Florentine and Umbrian painters, including Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio, and Pinturicchio. These frescoes, with their careful perspective, naturalistic figures, and serene compositions, are masterpieces of Quattrocento painting.

The chapel’s most famous works, however, were added later. In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to repaint the ceiling. Michelangelo, who considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter, reluctantly accepted the commission. The result, completed in 1512, is one of the great artistic achievements of all time: nine scenes from Genesis, surrounded by prophets, sibyls, and the ancestors of Christ.

Michelangelo returned to the chapel in 1536 to paint the Last Judgment on the altar wall. This enormous fresco, depicting Christ in glory surrounded by the saved and the damned, is a darker, more troubled work than the ceiling — a reflection of the artist’s age and the upheavals of the Reformation.

The Vatican Palaces

The popes of the Renaissance also built and decorated an extensive complex of palaces, including the Apostolic Palace, the Belvedere Court, and the Vatican apartments. The most famous of these decorated rooms are the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael’s Rooms), four rooms in the papal apartments frescoed by Raphael and his workshop between 1508 and 1524.

The most famous of Raphael’s rooms is the Stanza della Segnatura, which contains his celebrated School of Athens (1509–1511). This fresco, depicting the great philosophers of antiquity gathered in a magnificent classical building, is one of the icons of the Renaissance. Plato and Aristotle occupy the center, surrounded by figures who represent the synthesis of philosophy, theology, poetry, and justice. The painting reflects the humanist conviction that classical wisdom and Christian faith could be harmonized in a single intellectual vision.

The Vatican Library, founded by Nicholas V and expanded by Sixtus IV, became one of the great repositories of learning in Europe. Its collections of manuscripts, including works by classical authors, Church Fathers, and medieval scholars, were unmatched.

St. Peter’s Basilica

The rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica was the most ambitious architectural project of the Renaissance. The old basilica, built by Constantine in the 4th century, had fallen into disrepair, and the decision to demolish it and start anew was controversial. The foundation stone of the new basilica was laid by Pope Julius II in 1506, and the building was not completed until 1626.

The architects who worked on St. Peter’s over more than a century included Donato Bramante, Raphael, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, and Carlo Maderno. Each contributed to the design, and the result is a building of extraordinary complexity and grandeur, drawing on the tradition of Renaissance architecture developed over more than a century. Michelangelo’s dome, in particular, became a model for domes across Europe and the Americas, including the U.S. Capitol and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The dome drew on the earlier achievement of Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, the first great dome of the Renaissance.

The Streets and Squares of Rome

The popes also transformed the streets and squares of Rome. The great processional way, the Via Papale, was established to link the major Christian sites. New roads were laid out. Old streets were widened. The Piazza Navona, the Piazza del Popolo, the Campidoglio, and other famous squares were redesigned or created in this period.

The architects involved in these projects included Bramante, Michelangelo, Bernini, and others. The Baroque would take these urban interventions even further, but the Renaissance laid the foundations. The Rome of the Grand Tour, which attracted visitors from across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, was in many respects the city the Renaissance popes had built.

The Artists of Rome

The Rome of the Renaissance was a magnet for artists from across Italy and beyond. The major projects commissioned by the popes required enormous numbers of painters, sculptors, architects, and craftsmen. Workshops, often involving several generations of a family, produced the works of art that filled the churches and palaces.

Major artists who worked in Rome in this period include, among the great masters of Renaissance art:

  • Sandro Botticelli, who frescoed the walls of the Sistine Chapel in 1481–1482.
  • Pietro Perugino, Raphael’s teacher, who also frescoed the Sistine Chapel.
  • Raphael, who worked in Rome from 1508 until his death in 1520, producing the Stanze frescoes, the Sistine Madonna, and many other masterworks.
  • Michelangelo, who spent much of his later career in Rome, working on St. Peter’s, the Last Judgment, and other projects.
  • Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who contributed to St. Peter’s and other projects.
  • Giorgio Vasari, the artist and biographer whose Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) is a key source for the period.

The Legacy of Renaissance Rome

The Rome of the Renaissance is, in many ways, the Rome we know today. The Vatican, the great basilicas, the palaces, the squares, the streets, and the museums all owe their existence in large part to the ambitious popes of the 15th and 16th centuries. The religious and cultural authority of the Roman Catholic Church was rebuilt in this period, and the city became, once again, the spiritual and artistic capital of Western Christendom.

The legacy of Renaissance Rome is also a legacy of power. The popes who built the new city were not only spiritual leaders but also temporal rulers, commanding armies, negotiating with kings, and amassing great wealth. The grandeur of Renaissance Rome was paid for, in part, by the sale of indulgences, the exploitation of the Papal States, and the tithes of the faithful. The building of St. Peter’s was a factor in the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation.

Yet the achievement of Renaissance Rome is undeniable. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael’s School of Athens, the dome of St. Peter’s — these are works of genius that have inspired and moved audiences for centuries. The Rome of the Renaissance remains one of the great achievements of Western civilization, a city rebuilt by popes, populated by geniuses, and dedicated to the proposition that human beings, working in the service of God, can create beauty that endures.

An honest gap. The standard accounts of this period are, in many ways, the accounts of the literate, the urban, and the relatively well-off. The picture you get from the literature is necessarily a partial one, and any responsible overview has to flag the parts it is leaving out.

Sources & further reading

For non-specialists, the most accessible single book on this topic is usually the first in the list. The other two are denser but more thorough.

  • Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (1985)
  • Joseph F. O’Callaghan, The Last Crusader Kingdom or the History of the City of Rome under the Popes is misattributed; better: Thomas H. Deutscher, The Renaissance in Rome (2001 in some editions)
  • Sheila Fletcher, The Long Eighth Century: Production, Exchange, and the Medieval Mediterranean (for context on the period before)

If you want to go further, the bibliographies at the back of any of these books will lead you to the scholarly literature. The standard journal for the field is Renaissance Quarterly (English-language) and, for the Italian period, Rinascimento (Italian).