How does a city rise again—not from fire or conquest, but from memory? In this episode of Foundations of Rome, we trace the Renaissance transformation of Rome from a city of ruins and relics into a capital of art, architecture, and humanist ambition. From Pope Nicholas V’s grand vision to Bramante’s bold designs for Saint Peter’s, and from the revival of Vitruvius to Raphael’s luminous School of Athens, we explore how marble, manuscript, and imagination reshaped the Eternal City. This was not nostalgia—it was reinvention. Rome did not abandon its past. It assembled it, reinterpreted it, and crowned it with frescoes, domes, and classical dreams.