ABSTRACT
The first half of the eighteenth century, from the pontificate of Clement XI Albani (1700-1721) to that Clement XII Corsini (1730-40), saw a renewed sensibility to architecture in Rome along with a new desire to conceive of monumental projects as intrinsic to a more closely defined vision of the urban fabric as a whole: an urban fabric that was both deeply rooted in its own past, and undergoing a transformation into a modern metropolis.1 To a certain extent, this sensibility had already been evident through centuries of papal policy concerning the capital and its infrastructure, but now, partly due to more active comparison and exchange with other Italian territories and countries north of the Alps, it seems to have found a much more incisive and more fully developed theoretical articulation. This was expressed in large-scale projects, some of which were actually realized in concrete form and which were inspired by the theoretical reflections of the personalities and intellectual milieux of the courts of the cardinals Alessandro Albani and Neri Corsini.
