Sometimes in art, just as in investigative journalism, you have to follow the money. Those artists who found their way to Rome and into the good graces of the Borghese family were doing just that. For in 1605, one of the Borgheses was elevated to become Pope Paul V, and he appointed his libertine, art-savvy nephew Scipione Borghese as Cardinal and as chief of all the papal affairs. (Fun Fact: The word in Italian for "nephew" is "napote." From that we derive the...

As the ruins strewn about the Forum indicate, Rome had a decline ... a fabled, steep decline. That in itself is remarkable, but even more amazing was that once it hit bottom, Rome bounced. The Dark Ages were unkind to the city. As his army failed to halt the invading northerners, the last Emperor snuck out of town in 476 C.E. Rome's population plummeted from a million or so inhabitants to less than 50,000. (Some estimates say it may have dropped to as few a...

All of Rome, it seems, qualifies as an archeological site. Some of the ancient architecture was buried by Rome's frequent, sludgy floods, but astonishingly, some of the ancient buildings are still in everyday use. Much of today's city is built literally atop the sedimented-over remains of its own antiquity. Dig a bit and you may find the remains of a Roman general's villa ... or a goat herder's dung pile. Or perhaps both, for when a city has survived as long (a...

I am drawn to maps. These graphic depictions of our world fascinate me. Cartographers manage to cleave, crunch, and ultimately compress our 3-dimensional planet into 2-dimensional drawings, a goal that, if it were not vitally necessary, would seem absurd from the outset. Yet despite these Herculean hurdles, most maps include lines and colors that reflect the map-makers' attempt not only to describe reality, but also to expand a bit beyond it. In so doing, maps ...

Hello again, Blogonauts! Here are a few highlights from my last 24 hours in Paris: Saturday evening was splurge time, so I had dinner at Brasserie Bofinger, a lovely old Parisian institution. If you must wait in line for a table, the maître d' hands you a card containing the name of a classical composer. When he calls out the the composer's name, your table is ready. So once I heard "Haydn," I stepped out from the shadows and was escorted up the stairs...