Dorothy Metzger Habel is a scholar of seventeenth-century Italian art whose research focuses on the architecture and city planning of papal Rome. Her recent book The Urban Development of Rome in the Age of Alexander VII (Cambridge University Press, 2002) examines the role of discrete zones within the city, including the Quirinal, Piazza del Popolo, Piazza S. Marco, Piazza Colonna, via del Corso and Piazza S. Pietro, in establishing Pope Alexander VII's new conceptualization of the city as one reviving the architectural formulae of late-antique Roman Asia. In addition, she has published studies on the architecture and sculpture of Bernini, the architecture of Pietro da Cortona and the architectural history of Piazza S. Ignazio, Rome in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She received her M. A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan.