Professor Flavia Marcello is a writer of place-based fiction with notes of, sometimes sardonic, humour where characters question their identity. Her biography of World War 2 Resistance fighter, Carla Capponi has been shortlisted for the 2026 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship.
She is an expert on the unique and multi-layered history of Rome with a focus on the Italian Fascist Period.
She is director of Synergy3 Consulting, teaches at WEA in Sydney and is a mentor with the Envisage Program.
16th C Rome
The 16th Century is arguably Rome’s most popular period – everyone loves the Renaissance and that goes for tourists and academics alike. So what I can I add? I’m looking at how the city was viewed and represented by cartographers and engravers. How they shifted buildings slightly or made them bigger to serve their own agenda or those of the rich and powerful (usually popes and cardinals!). I am looking at how to use digital technology to overlay the maps so I can compare them and then see if I can make them 3D so one day you can pretend to walk around in Etienne Dupèrac’s or Mario Cartaro’s idea of Rome under Gregory XIII. Both these cartographers had a go at reconstructing the ancient city as well. I presented a paper on this at the European Architectural History Network conference in Tallinn in June 2018.
