Petrarca Rómában

Abstract

Petrarch first came to Rome only in 1337, when he was 33 years old, but he always felt Roman in his soul, and he expressed this several times in his works. He reported on his stays in Rome several times in his letters to his friends and in other writings. One of the most significant of these is Letter 2 of Book 6 of the Rerum familiarium libri, addressed to his friend Giovanni Colonna, recalling their walks together in the Eternal City. The letter consists of three useful parts, only loosely connected to each other. In this paper, I am seeking to answer the question of why Petrarch chose to include this letter in the volume; what links the parts with seemingly different themes; what makes Petrarch a real civis Romanus.