What had seemed to Grand Tourists a museum of idealized antiquity and Renaissance art became--in the eyes of Byron, Keats, Shelley and a host of other visitors--a nation struggling to assert itself but not quite able to do so. "Italia Romantica" is a vivid history of the English Romantics' love affair with Italy and of the changing attitudes in pre-unification Italy. Roderick Cavaliero's compelling story is full of bandits, unreformed Catholicism, poets, and improvvisatori, shot through with vignettes of timeless urban and pastoral life, remarkable characters, and anecdotes.