For nearly 2,000 years, writers have memorialized their love affair with Rome, helping us vicariously experience the Eternal City in travelogues, journals and memoirs. Two easy-to-read memoirs out in paperback are Anthony Doerr’s “Four Seasons in Rome” and Ann Patty’s “Living with a Dead Language.”

Anthony Doerr, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for “All the Light We Cannot See,” relates his time as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in his memoir subtitled “On Twins, Insomnia and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World.” On the day he and his wife bring their twin sons home from the hospital, a letter arrives explaining that he has been awarded the Rome Prize for literature.