In the early 100s CE, the city of Rome is estimated to have had roughly a million inhabitants. By the year 600, the population had plummeted to a tiny fraction of that number, perhaps a few tens of thousands. What happened to bring about such a dramatic demographic decline, and what did it mean for the urban infrastructure and cultural patrimony of the most densely monumental, art-rich city of the ancient Mediterranean? When did the city begin to recover, and how? Did other cities benefit or compensate? Were there ever similar, smaller collapses in later eras? In each case, how did art and building rebound? In this research seminar, we will probe these issues in two ways: first, through directed readings and individual research, starting with new studies at the intersection of history and science, which are bringing to light the fundamental roles played by climate change, pandemic, and environmental disaster in the fate of Rome  and second, through direct physical explorations of the city itself--of buildings, objects, and spaces that bear witness to urban collapse and to the often ingenious ways people responded to it by adapting, recycling, and transforming (physically, functionally, narratively) the grand array of art, edifices, and public spaces left over from earlier eras. With Rome as our primary case study, the seminar will also consider examples of collapse and reinvention in other cities, above all the now ubiquitous phenomenon in Italy of 'death by art': the depopulation and demise as living cities of Italy's most beautiful 'città d'arte' (Venice, Florence, Rome, Assisi...) and the forces at work, including mass tourism and the public policies that support it. Since this seminar spans much of Rome's long history and takes place almost entirely on location in the city, it functions as a full immersion the art-historical topography, monuments, and materials of Rome as they developed over the course of the last two millennia, along with the mechanisms of reuse, recycling, and adaptation that are one of the Eternal City's most remarkable and distinctive hallmarks. For purposes of comparison, the course includes an overnight field trip to the city of Ravenna, which in 402 became the Imperial seat in Italy and whose magnificent late-antique and early-Byzantine churches, monuments offer spectacular examples of how art can thrive in times of political crisis and implosion.