Rome has played a pivotal role in the construction of a global scale culture. It first contributed to unifying the ancient world system as the capital of an empire. Then, in the early modern period (parallel to the age of explorations and colonialism), it became a laboratory for interactions between the local and the global. This course focuses on these interactions roughly between 1550 and 1750, the so-called Counter Reformation and Baroque Age.  Although this is mainly an on-site art history course, each art work, building, or urban plan is studied as a document to understand broader concepts related to geography, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. To assess the value of early modern art and architecture students develop multidisciplinary skills to investigate the multilayered meanings of objects, buildings, and urbanism. Focusing first on Caravaggio, then on the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini, and finally on the Renovatio Urbis (the new avenues connecting the main churches of the city), this course simultaneously explores the micro and the macro context of every commission. From the private fashioning of papal families (Borghese, Barberini, Pamphili, and Chigi) to the impression of orbialization (the concept that pervades the papal blessing addressed to the city and to the world), the city promised to be a topographical space of universal salvation. From the different approaches to art and architecture by Bernini and Borromini (theatrical and philosophical respectively) to the impact of the interreligious encounters of the new religious orders, Rome appeared as the laboratory of a globalization actualized in tandem with the colonial powers of Portugal, France, and Spain. The Spanish Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus in 1540 in Rome, shifted the religious discourse toward the universal good setting the program for a possible global society. The Jesuit system with their missionary and educational activities throughout the world was the most important institution for “interactions”. No wonder that in the 17th century, the Roman main educational institutions (Studium Urbis, Collegio Romano, Propaganda Fide) focused on the study of languages and the publication of dictionaries and grammar books. The impact of the Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher over 17th century Rome is as polyhedric as his writings. Kircher created one of the biggest cabinets of curiosities (wunderkammer) of Europe. His collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiques, embalmed animals, botanical rarities, scientific instruments, and a myriad of objects coming from China, India, Mexico, etc. was referred to as theatrum mundi (the theatre of the world), a metaphoric representation of the culture of the early modern city. By the end of the 17th century, Rome simultaneously assumed the connotations of new Jerusalem, Athens, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Babel mirroring the world as if in a theatre of memory and geography while other cities in different continents took the name of Rome of the East or Rome of the West through a religious and architectural response. The visual arts reveal the global resonance of Rome but also the presence of different ethnic groups in the city. The Eternal City was, undoubtedly, one of the loci where the subjective dimension of globalization originated.