The art and architecture of the medieval city of Rome is typically presented in art historical scholarship as periodically renewing itself across some thousand years – from the emergence of the first Christian basilicas in the fourth century, to the fourteenth century when the papacy left the Urbs (1309) to reside in the French city of Avignon, returning in 1376. The source for these revivals is, of course, the city's imperial past as caput mundi – pagan or Christian – as reflected in the splendor and exalted artistic quality of its monuments. Perhaps no other study on the topic has proved more influential in promoting this narrative than Richard Krautheimer's book Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308, first published in 1980 by Princeton University Press. The goal of this superbly written historical survey, as stated by its author, is: ‘to outline a history of Rome during a thousand years through, rather than of, her monuments.’ What transpires from his presentation of this millennial trajectory, as told by the monuments themselves, is the ebb and flow of the reception of imperial Rome in the city's visual and architectural culture. A classical ‘revival’ of the fifth century followed by a ‘renewal and renascence’ of the Carolingian period and another ‘rebirth’ and ‘renewal’ from the late eleventh through the thirteenth century are thus seen to alternate with periods of urban devastation, ‘eastern’ political dominance or utter moral, social, and economic decline.