Stepping inside some of Rome's most magnificent buildings, I witness how religion, art, lust and greed vie to create the most splendid city on Earth. But the hubris of the popes almost destroys the very city they are creating. In the centuries that follow, Protestantism and nationalism threaten Rome and the papacy. In order to prosper, the Eternal City would need to adapt again and again. This is the blood-spattered, dramatic story of how Rome emerged from the turbulence of the early popes and the catastrophes of the Middle Ages into the magnificent city we see today. In 1350, Rome was a desperate backwater. The kings of France dominated Rome and forced the election of a French pope, who took up his residence not in Rome, but in Avignon. Without the Pope, Rome lost its financial and moral power. Crime thrived on its streets, dominated by two aristocratic families, the Colonnas and the Orsinis, from their fortified palaces. They ruled the territories in the city like gangster bosses, Rome's real-life versions of Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets.