Tradition holds that Martin V was the first Renaissance pope, but it was his successor, Eugenius IV (or “Eugene”), who actually brought the flower of the Renaissance to Rome. After spending nine months with the Medici in Florence, he returned to Rome and began serious efforts to bring the city back from its medieval decay. He sought to emulate the magnificence of northern cities like Milan, Genoa, and Venice.
John Julius Norwich offers the following reflections on this exciting epoch, the dawn of the Renaissance:
“Artistically and culturally, however, Rome was still something of a backwater when Cardinal Tommaso Parentucelli, the son of a modest physician in Liguria, was elected pontiff in March 1447, taking the name of Nicholas V. Of the previous 140 years the popes had been absent for well over half, and thanks to the consequent chaos the flowering of classical and humanistic learning that had…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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