“Rome wasn’t built in a day”: lobbies, institutions, and speculation in the 1880s building fever

During the 1880s, a massive speculative boom occurred in the Roman real estate market. Its subsequent crash left a lasting mark on the structure of the city and triggered a nationwide banking crisis. This article analyses the causes of this boom and bust by showing how a small but cohesive lobby managed to bypass and bend to its own advantage formal regulation by exploiting institutional conflicts and political divisions at both national and local level.