The American Academy in Rome (AAR) is one of the leading overseas centers for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities. Established in 1894, the Academy was chartered as a private institution by an act of Congress in 1905. The Academy’s central purpose is its fellowship program. Each year through a national juried competition, the Academy offers up to thirty Rome Prize fellowships, which range in duration from six months to two years. Fellowships are offered in the following disciplines: Architecture, Design, Historic Preservation and Conservation, Landscape Architecture, Literature, Musical Composition, Visual Arts, and in humanistic approaches to Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and Modern Italian Studies. Rome Prize and other fellowship winners are joined at the Academy by a select group of distinguished Residents and other artists and scholars, forming a residential community of approximately 100 individuals.

Notable features of the Academy are its first-class research library of 128,000 volumes and its photographic archive. The Academy is a founding member of URBS (Union of Scholarly Libraries in Rome), an association of sixteen libraries, including the Vatican Library. The primary goal of URBS has been the creation of an online union catalogue of the library holdings of its members, which now exceeds 900,000 records.

The Academy also sponsors exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and conferences that draw international audiences to its historic eleven-acre site, high atop the Janiculum Hill. Similar cultural events are held in the Academy’s New York headquarters as well as in select locations throughout the United States. In addition to these public events, the Academy offers a series of summer programs in archaeology, classical studies, palaeography, and the humanities. It regularly issues scholarly publications in four series through Cambridge University Press and the University of Michigan Press.