In 1521, the sacred city of Tenochtitlán was sacked by a coalition of Central Mexican anti-Aztec warriors and their European allies. Six years later, across the Atlantic, another sacred city–Rome–was also invaded, looted, and occupied. Much has been written about the rebuilding of bombed European cities after World War II, but studying processes of urban reconstruction five centuries ago presents very different challenges. This talk considers the kinds of sources we can use to tell the story of how these two early modern cities were remade after devastation. Byron Ellsworth Hamann (BA History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, 1994) has written on writing systems, dictionaries, archives, inquisitions, shipwrecks, landscapes, temporalities, and architecture in the early modern Mediterratlantic world. This event is free and open to the public, and there will be a reception to follow the lecture.