Italian Cities

This three-volume history treats Rome, Florence, and Venice as subjects with their own continuous lives rather than as stops on a tour. Each book follows a city from its early settlement through republic, lordship or papacy, foreign occupation, and the modern Italian state. Hibbert attends to factions, trade, patronage, and the building of churches, palaces, and public works, and he places popes, Medici, doges, and later administrators inside the streets they altered. The volumes are civic biographies: narrative political and social accounts of how three Italian capitals were governed, enriched, and rebuilt over many centuries.

Bound in artificial silk (a different colour for each volume), decorated in gold, endleaves printed in gold to a design by David Eccles. 16 pages of colour plates in each volume. Dark blue three-volume slipcase printed in black and titled in gold. Volumes form colours of Italian flag in slipcase. Green binding, dark green endleaves. Cream binding, dark brown endleaves. Red binding, dark red endleaves.