Walls and Memory: The Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri (Lazio), from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond

The abbey of San Sebastiano, which lies not far from the town of Alatri in Southern Lazio, preserves within its walls almost fifteen hundred years of history. This history is unusually bound to a number of important figures, from Saint Benedict to Pope Nicholas V and his circle of humanists. For the past four years a small team has been investigating the extant structures of the abbey, analyzing the stratigraphy of the standing walls and tracing the various building phases. The study has produced some startling discoveries: the plan and preserved walls of one of the oldest monasteries in Europe, and one of the earliest Renaissance villas. The book gives an account of the architecture and the history of the building, showing how each phase relates to the last both structurally and thematically.

The project was initiated at the American Academy in Rome, where Elizabeth Fentress was Andrew Mellon Professor, and Caroline Goodson, Margaret L. Laird and Stephanie C. Leone were Fellows. Margaret Laird and Stephanie Leone are now assistant professors at the University of Washington, Seattle and at Boston College. Other contributors include Caroline Bruzelius, Professor of the History of Art at Duke University, Antonio Manfredi, Vatican Library, Serena Romano, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Lausanne, Marco Rossi, director of the Museum of Alatri, and Ingrid Rowland, Andrew Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome.