The British School at Rome

George Trevelyan described Rome as ‘the heart of Europe, and the living chronicle of man’s long march to civilisation’. Since the first archaeological digs during the Renaissance, the eternal city held an enduring fascination for northern European scholars that greatly increased in the late Victorian age with the massive excavations in the Roman Forum. These excavations provided the impetus for a permanent base for British scholarship in the city, matching the institutes founded by the Germans (in 1829), the French (1873), Austrians (1881) and Americans (1894). With the creation of the British School at Athens in 1886, Italophiles at Cambridge, Oxford and London universities launched a campaign for an institute in Rome. The School celebrates the centenary of its foundation this month.