| Mapping Augustan Rome | |
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About the Project Mapping Augustan
Rome responds to a lacuna in the field of Roman archaeology and urbanism:
there exists no comprehensive reasoned period plan of Republican or Imperial
Rome. Our enterprise aimed to
create a visual synopsis of what is known about the city of Rome c.A.D.
14 – a pivotal phase of Rome’s transformation into an imperial capital –
and to justify our renderings in written form.
The result is a set of large-scale maps (1:6000 for the Main Map; 1:3000
for the Central Area) and a critical commentary addressing every structure,
area, and aspect depicted. The
title, Mapping Augustan Rome, expressly conveys our belief that the work
offered here is merely the beginning of a larger process of reasoned
visualization to be carried out on many levels of scholarship and which may,
eventually, result in a ‘map’ of Augustan Rome. Begun in December of
1998, Mapping Augustan Rome had its origins in a graduate seminar
initiated by Lothar Haselberger and co-taught with David Gilman Romano at the
University of Pennsylvania. Contributors
to the project included eleven graduate students and one
undergraduate, hailing from various disciplines including archaeology, art
history, ancient history, and classics. Each
participant was assigned a region of the Urbs to research, producing
written entries and annotated visual materials which were then transformed by
D.G. Romano and two graduate students into a digital format.
Concurrently, Andrew Gallia and Nicholas Stapp worked to model the
physical topography of the Augustan city, one of the project’s notable
innovations (for technical details: “Making
the map”. At the end of the process, Mark Davison, a professional
graphic designer, improved the legibility and aesthetics of the maps. The written text
includes two introductory chapters which outline the project’s goals,
procedures and accomplishments “An
introduction to the experiment” , and explain the intricacies of
computerized map-making “Making the map”
. The balance of the volume
consists of individual entries which seek to justify and explain each aspect of
the map. Each region of the city is
addressed in a broad, over-arching entry, as are several urban systems such as
aqueducts, city walls, and suburban expansion.
Individual entries detail nearly
400 buildings, monuments, streets, tombs, neighborhoods, and horti, as
well as more than 50 aspects of the Augustan city which could not be visualized,
often due to an imperfectly known location (for a complete list, consult the
indices of the Main Map). Rather
than repeating information already available in topographic dictionaries such as
the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, each entry is limited to issues
which impact the rendering process; aspects and debates tangential to the focus
of our work are cursorily treated, if at all. Though hindsight always reveals room for improvement, we hope to have provided a critically commented-upon period plan of Rome at a crucial stage of its urban development. We invite those with questions or comments to contact us at rome@sas.upenn.edu . |
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About the Project
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© D.G. Romano & L.
Haselberger. 2003. |
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