For a thousand years, Rome was enshrined in myth and legend as the Eternal City. No Grand Tour would be complete without a visit to its ruins. But from 1870 all that changed. A millennium ended as its solitary moonlit ruins became floodlit monuments on traffic islands, and its perimeter shifted from the ancient nineteen-kilometre wall with twelve gates to a fifty-kilometre ring road with thirty-three roundabouts and spaghetti junctions. The Rome We Have Lost is the first full investigation of this change. John Pemble musters popes, emperors, writers, exiles, and tourists, to weave a rich fabric of Roman experience. He tells the story of how, why, and with what consequences that Rome, centre of Europe and the world, became a national capital: no longer central and unique, but marginal and very similar in its problems and its solutions to other modern cities with a heavy burden of 'heritage'. This far-reaching book illuminates the historical significance of Rome's transformation and the crisis that Europe is now confronting as it struggles to re-invent without its ancestral centre -- the city that had made Europe what it was, and defined what it meant to be European.

"The Rome We Have Lost is a magnificent companion ... Lucid and authoritative, Pemble shows how Rome, even when absented from history as a 'heritage site', remains a shaping presence." - Dominic Green, Minerva

"Among the merits of this beautifully written book is its understated erudition and pithy yet wide-ranging narrative, itself a product of the European cultural tradition that this author both applauds and mourns." - Lucy Riall, Times Literary Supplement

"Any serious consideration of what Rome means must combine vastly different disciplines. Pemble is poetic, skilled and erudite in juggling them." - Emily Michelson, Times Higher Education

"This is an erduite, beautifully written and thought provoking book." - Rosemary Sweet, University of Leicester