Jürgen Krüger

I love to discover places following the footsteps of prior visitors. Rome certainly has had no shortage of famous visitors, among them a German Augustine monk called Martin Luther in 1511 who was tasked with lobbying the pope to shore up the power of his boss back in Germany. Luther (or as he then spelled it Luder - which, today, actually means "slut" in German) did not write an account of the city so that his stories of Rome form part of his famous table conversations.

Thus, the authors have to make do without a famous Cicerone and present in their own views and many photographs the approach and the highlights of late medieval Rome (which was just starting to recover from the cultural slump it had become). Luther's quotes and statements about Rome can only serve as flavor and sell the book, whereas the book is mostly about how a common pilgrim to Rome would stay in the city and what sights (churches, churches, churches) he or she would visit.… (mehr)