From a shoemaker’s workshop in provincial Germany to the treasures of eighteenth-century Rome, Torniamo follows the extraordinary life of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the man who taught Europe to see the ancient world with new eyes.

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Born into poverty but driven by an insatiable hunger for knowledge and beauty, Winckelmann finds his true home among Rome’s artists, cardinals, collectors, excavations, and newly uncovered antiquities.

 

At the height of his fame, however, he leaves the city he loves—and then abruptly turns back. His journey home ends in Trieste, where a chance encounter with a stranger becomes fatal.

 

Told through the memories of a dying man, Torniamo is a richly imagined historical novel about beauty and ambition, friendship and identity, and the mysterious pull of the place where we finally belong.