Stone of Michelangelo: The Miraculous Engineering of St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, Rome

If you could strip away the centuries of polished marble and tourist chatter, would you have the courage to stand in the pitch-black damp of a first-century Roman necropolis, smelling the fresh earth and cold clay just inches from the bones of an executed Galilean fisherman? For the seasoned history enthusiast, the timeline of Rome is too often reduced to static dates, blueprints, and clean museum...