Commissioned by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities at the end of 2006, Italian photographer Armin Linke proposed a photographic mapping of all the institutions housed in various historical buildings in Rome.

His research attempted to carry out both a documentation of and an inquiry into the characteristics of public institutions.

The result is a portrait of the Italian State through the understanding of the architecture in which functions and ceremonies are performed daily.

Including excerpts from Giorgio Agamben’s recent book Il Regno e la Gloria, the publication invites a critical reading of the representation of power, while displaying very rarely seen interiors and details of the government’s settings in an objective style typical of Linke’s images.

This book is published with the support of MAXXI, Roma.

English and Italian text.