Traditionally thought of as the home of the Counter-Reformation papacy and of the Inquisition, Rome has never been regarded as a major scientific centre. Yet the new research presented here, much of it based on previously unstudied archival material, highlights the special character of science and medicine in the city and its institutions: academies (above all, the famous Accademia dei Lincei), hospitals, libraries, monasteries, universities and courts, as well as the papal Curia and the Congregation of the Index. The approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, ranging over many disciplines - engineering, architecture, chemistry, botany, mathematics, astronomy and geography - and covering a diversity of topics, from atlases and anatomical illustration to sudden death and autopsies, from authorship and censorship to patronage and the Republic of Letters.