ABSTRACT
Already by 1500 Rome was the place to be. Romans and foreigners alike flocked to the papal court. Many writers, like Trissino, Bembo, and Castiglione, were also diplomats bound for Rome. Artists, writers, intellectuals, architects, diplomats, Eastern dignitaries, doctors, cardinals, merchants, and many others joined them, making the city a melting pot. One of Rome’s defining characteristics was its atmosphere of transience: pilgrims regularly drifted into a city that stretched to accommodate visionaries and thieves alike. Moreover, with every new pope in the Renaissance century came a comprehensive changing of the guard: no two popes from the same family succeeded each other in over one hundred years.3
