Rome, the centre of Christendom for nearly two millennia and capital of the new Italian state from 1871, is an extraordinary city. The complexity of its making, its layers and its modern-day functioning make it very difficult to ‘read’ and negotiate, and the sheer number of its riches make it difficult to understand. This lecture series will try to make sense of the relics and components of the Eternal City by exploring the topography and the expansion of the city, by identifying the relics and underlying presence of classical Rome, by explaining the collapse of the city in the Middle Ages and its reconstruction in the Renaissance, by looking at some of the architectural and sculptural jewels of the Baroque and by explaining the ultimate layer of modern Rome, the making and unmaking of the city since 1871.