San Paolo fuori le Mura 1823. Incendio e ricostruzione, Roma 2026

a cura di Roberto Regoli – Ilaria Fiumi Sermattei

Presentation of the book San Paolo fuori le Mura 1823. Incendio e ricostruzione, edited by Roberto Regoli – Ilaria Fiumi Sermattei, Campisano 2026, with contributions by Monica Calzolari, Nicola Camerlenghi, Giovanna Capitelli, Umberto Castagnino Berlinghieri, Giorgio Filippi, Ilaria Fiumi Sermattei, Barbara Jatta, Nicoletta Marconi, Stefano Marsella, Donato Ogliari, Raffaele Pittella, Roberto Regoli, Andrea Riccardi, and Richard Wittman and preface by Cardinal James Michael Harvey.

The book takes its starting point from the events of the night between July 15 and 16, 1823, when a terrible fire broke out and devastated the Patriarchal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. That event touched and left its mark on the collective imagination of an era that felt shaken by those flames. Those ruins raised questions. Leave everything destroyed? Rebuild? Build something else? A long, lively, and complex debate began regarding the criteria for reconstruction, which concerned the relationship with the past, the ancient, and its preservation, but also its management in the present and future. Ultimately, the debate centered on the relationship between the ancient and the modern, between the old world and the new world.

This volume seeks to examine the historicist approach adopted in the new Basilica of St. Paul as a response—at once Catholic, Romantic, and modern—to the criticisms leveled by the Enlightenment philosophes and to the traumas caused by the revolutionary and Napoleonic upheavals. In this sense, the aim was to chart a broader, epoch-defining response. Ultimately, the aim was to offer a general direction for Catholicism. All of this will be discussed during the book’s launch.