During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the city of Rome saw itself transformed from a shrinking and neglected medieval town into a thriving center of artistic achievement. This lecture course focuses on the historical, geographic, and ideological forces behind this period of renovation and restoration forces that reworked the urban fabric of the city while shaping the character of the visual arts from Filarete and Fra Angelico to Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We will examine monuments such as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, then, not only as touchstones for the history of western art, but also as images capable of reflecting, and even constructing, a uniquely Roman sense of power, time, and historical destiny.