During the one hundred year period from 1770 to 1870, often called the Romantic Era, hosts of artists traveled to Rome and witnessed the most dramatic transformation of the Eternal City since ancient times—from papal state to the capital of a unified, modern nation. Painters such as Jean-Baptiste- Camille Corot and J. M. W. Turner, writers such as John Keats and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a coterie of early photographers were among those who documented the city’s historical sights and monuments amidst what amounted to a massive project of urban renewal.