Full-term and half-term Rome Prize Fellowships are available to professionals in historic preservation and conservation who are actively engaged in their fields.

These awards are intended for a broad range of individuals who work on the conservation and historic preservation of works of art, manuscripts, or cultural properties (including architecture, engineering, planning and design, urban design, or landscape architecture), and those who work in cultural policy. Applicants are encouraged to submit materials that best express the quality of what they do and how they think.

The required application materials include a completed online application form and the following three documents, to be uploaded to your online application as three separate digital files:

1. Current résumé/curriculum vitae. Please include languages read and spoken and level of fluency.

2. One- to four-page proposal describing the project to be undertaken. Please be sure to address the following points/questions in your proposal:

• How will the proposed project and your own professional development will benefit from a residency within a multidisciplinary community in Rome?
• What guides or motivates your work?
• Rome is a modern city powerfully stamped by the material remains of the past. Is this past important to your present? If so, why?
• What, if any, resources in Rome or Italy will be significant to the completion of your proposed project?
• What kind of workspace do you need in Rome?

Please include bibliographical notes for any sources cited (not counted toward the four-page limit). Your proposal should be double-spaced with 10- to 12-point typeface and one-inch margins.

3. Work Sample (e.g., portfolio, essay, publication, etc.) of up to forty pages in PDF format which characterizes the applicant’s approach to their work. Work submitted should be the sole product of the applicant, or substantially the product of the applicant with the applicant’s role in the work clearly noted. The jury has limited time, so applicants should make their portfolio succinct and easy to understand. If the PDF exceeds the 10 MB upload limit, please send the work sample on USB drive to the address listed below.

Also needed are three reference letters from professionals acquainted with you and your work. Recommenders will be asked to submit their letters electronically through our online system.

Finally, you must submit an application fee paid by credit card through our online payment option or by check or money order made payable to American Academy in Rome and mailed to the following address: 

American Academy in Rome
Attention: Historic Preservation and Conservation
535 West 22nd Street, Third Floor
New York, NY 10011

If required, USB drives should be mailed to the same address above.

This fall, the American Academy in Rome is hosting three in-person information sessions about the Rome Prize. The first takes place at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Tuesday, September 24. The second will be presented at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence on Tuesday, October 8. The third will happen at Howard University in Washington, DC, on Thursday, October 17.

AAR will also present two general online information sessions on Zoom on September 23 and October 15. A third virtual meeting, focused only on landscape architecture, will happen on October 16.

These information sessions give prospective applicants a general overview of the Rome Prize application process and a look into the experience of living in the American Academy’s unique residential community in Rome.