The book, published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Casale di Santa Maria Nova, on the Appia Antica, presents the homage that the great Italian reporter paid to the capital. From the second half of the 1950s down to the present, Gianni Berengo Gardin has portrayed the whole of Roman society, from the underclass to the aristocracy, from the middle classes to working people. The power of his gaze has captured attitudes and gestures, epitomising the spirit of the city.

The volume, with a rich fund of previously unpublished photographs, is edited by Giuliano Sergio and is enriched with texts by Michele Smargiassi and Simona Turco. Added to these is an interview with the photographer, who reveals his long-standing ties with the Capital. From 1940 to 1947 Berengo Gardin lived in Rome during his childhood and early adolescence, where he measured the moral and civil values declaimed by the regime with the daily gestures of a community that remained united at the time of the country’s collapse. A story without images where the photographer’s memory takes us back to a dramatic season that has proved seminal for contemporary Rome. Behind the city photographed by the author hides the moral lesson of the Rome of his childhood.