Anyone who has visited Rome will recall the extraordinary benediction of water splashing and spraying everywhere. Like no other city, Rome is heartbreakingly generous—water gushes into fountains with reckless abandon and bubbles from hundreds of neighborhood taps. From Rome’s mythical founding during a Tiber River flood; its dramatic aqueducts marching across the Roman countryside from springs far outside the city; its glorious fountains; its spectacular villa gardens; to its smallest drinking fountains, Katherine Rinne’s Walking Rome’s Waters allows readers to follow water as it ripples, swirls, and flows propelled by gravity across nearly 3000 years of Rome’s urban history. To surrender to water’s inexorable forward journey is to track the flow of history; to sense the emerging shape of the ancient city morphing into medieval, Renaissance, and modern Rome; to understand the complex geology and the highs and lows of topography; to derive pure enjoyment; to enter Rome’s repository of memory; and to embrace water’s sacred spirit.
Book sale and signing to follow.
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Katherine Rinne is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Landscape Architecture Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia. Trained as an architect at the University of California, Berkeley, she practiced for 10 years, primarily with Johnson Fain Partners in Los Angeles. She has taught Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design and Planning studios and history seminars at UC Berkeley, USC, the University of Arkansas, Iowa State University, Harvard University, California College of the Arts, and for various American university programs in Rome.Her previous books include The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (Yale University Press 2010) and Rome: An Urban History from Antiquity to the Present, co-authored with Rabun Taylor and Spiro Kostof (d), (Cambridge University Press 2016). Her books for young readers include Francesco’s Fountain (2010) and The Mysteries at the Vanished Villa (2019), both illustrated by Sandra Forrest.
