Why read Destinations in Mind?

Book cover of Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman Empire's Souvenirs

Book description

In Destinations in Mind, Kimberly Cassibry asks how objects depicting different sites helped Romans understand their vast empire. At a time when many cities were written about but only a few were represented in art, four distinct sets of artifacts circulated new information. Engraved silver cups list all the stops…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Destinations in Mind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Maggie L. Popkin

Author

Although we often dismiss souvenirs as kitsch, they can be deeply meaningful to people, both today and in antiquity. Taking a phenomenological approach to ancient Roman souvenirs of places, Kimberly Cassibry shows how people would have held, used, and interacted with small objects showing seaside resort towns on the Bay of Naples, the Circus Maximus in Rome, Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, and the western empire’s network of imperial roads. Her book taught me just how large makers and materials loom in how places came to be represented and conceptualized in Roman antiquity. I love that Cassibry forces me to think…

From Maggie's list on travel and leisure in ancient Rome.