Opuscula is published by the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome, with the aid of a grant from the Swedish Research Council. Distributed by Eddy.se AB. View journal at ERIH PLUS. All content available with open access. Italian dreams, Roman longings. Vilhelm Lundström and the first Swedish philological-archaeological course in Rome, 1909 By Anna Blennow & Frederick Whitling Abstract In Sweden, the future of Classical Philology and the study of the ancient past remain uncertain a century after the first Swedish university course in Rome, led by Vilhelm Lundström, Professor of Latin at Gothenburg, and the simultaneous establishment of the study of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History in Swedish academia in 1909. The institutionalisation of the Swedish scholarly presence in Rome materialised with the establishment of the Swedish Institute in Rome (SIR) in 1925, and its inauguration the following year—partly as a result of Lundström’s pioneering initiative. The present article discusses the implications of Lundström’s course in Rome as well as in Sweden, and sheds light on his neohumanist vision of an integrated study of antiquity; with Classical Archaeology and Ancient History as integral elements of Classical Philology. This vision lay abandoned throughout the twentieth century, but deserves to be…