The Renaissance of Rome was a spectacular affair. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Rome was the shadow of what it was when it was the seat of the powerful Roman Empire. It had a population of about one million in the first century, which declined to about 25.000 at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
In Rome, the Renaissance began with Pope Martin V and continued under the following popes who ordered the construction of many religious, public and private monuments that contributed to enrich and embellish the city. Many of these buildings could be constructed from old marble monuments. The Imperial Forums were the quarry for the new Renaissance marble monuments.
During the Renaissance, Rome appeared as a work, the city remembers the archaeological excavations in which were found many historical remains of ancient Rome, for example, the famous Domus Aurea of Nero. The Church ordered the restoration of churches and monuments thanks to the great architects and painters of that time. In particular, the buildings and churches of Rome were enriched with frescoes and decorations of rare beauty that can still be admired today by visiting the city.
The Renaissance church has the symbolic cross shape (Latin or Greek) and was covered by a flat dome, often covered by vaults that replaced the Medieval domes and cross vaults.
Florence, the symbol of the Renaissance, rose in order to dominate cultural and economically in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the Medici government. Its 600 years of extraordinary artistic activity can be seen especially in the cathedral of Florence (13th century), in the Basilica of Santa Croce, in the Uffizi, in the Palazzo Vecchio, in the Palazzo Pitti, and in the works of the great masters like Giotto, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo and Miguel Angel.
In Florence, there was an indisputable theater of the Renaissance and that is why it was called as "the cradle of the Renaissance" since artists, painters, architects and sculptors moved to Rome, where they later left some of their famous works to the world.
