On this day: death of poet John Keats in Rome

Keats had been a published writer for only five years, yet in that short span he produced some of the most celebrated works of the Romantic movement. In the spring of 1819, while sitting beneath a plum tree in an English garden, he wrote “Ode to a Nightingale”, a poem that would become one of the defining texts of the era. Alongside “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “To Autumn”, it marked the creative peak of a young writer only beginning to gain recognition from critics.

By 1820, however, tuberculosis had taken hold. Doctors advised Keats to leave England for a warmer climate in the hope that it might slow the disease. In November that year, after a long and exhausting journey by sea and land, he arrived in Rome accompanied by his friend, the painter Joseph Severn.

The two men took rooms in a house at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome, overlooking Piazza di Spagna. Today the building is the Keats-Shelley House, a museum dedicated to the Romantic poets who lived and died in the city.

Keats’s bedroom looked out onto the square, and he could hear the constant sound of the Barcaccia fountain below. Some biographers believe that the presence of flowing water may have resonated with the line he later requested for his tombstone.

Seeking respite from tuberculosis

In his first weeks in Rome, Keats was still strong enough to take short walks along the Via del Corso and sit on the Spanish Steps. His doctor, however, discouraged visits to major sites such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum. Keats insisted that Severn see them instead and describe their splendour on his return.

By late November he sensed the seriousness of his condition. In a letter he wrote: “I have an habitual feeling of my real life being past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.” His health deteriorated rapidly in December. In keeping with medical practices of the time, he suffered repeated bloodletting and followed a strict, near-starvation diet.

There was a brief improvement in early January 1821, when he was able to go outside and enjoy the winter sunlight. But by February he was confined to bed. On 23 February he asked Severn to lift him, aware that he was dying. The devoted friend held him in his arms for hours until he passed away.