Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom

In the eyes of the English Romantics, Italy was not a nation but "Italia," a place inhabited by the ancient. Theirs was a view shaped by the eighteenth century, the age of the Grand Tour, when no future nobleman's education was complete without a visit to Venice's carnival, the majestic ruins of the Forum in Rome, or the legendary Mount Vesuvius. Italia Romantica is a vivid history of the English Romantics' love affair with Italy. Through the eyes of Romantic travellers and poets such as Byron, Keats and Shelley, a fascinating picture of pre-unification Italy emerges, struggling to recover after Napoleon and edging towards the Risorgimento. Here is the Italy of idealized antiquity, magnificent but crumbling, somewhat like a gigantic and rather run-down living museum. It is full of bandits, unreformed Catholicism, vignettes of urban and pastoral life, of memorable characters and anecdote.