Model of Rome

22l x 263cm; scale l :1200

This scale model of ancient Rome shows the centre of the city at about the end of the second century AD, although some later buildings down to the time of Constantine (early fourth century) are included. It was made by Errol B. Davis of Sydney in 1976. He used as his basis a contour map of Rome and photographs of the large model of ancient Rome in the Museo della Civiltà Romana in Rome. The contoured base is of fibreglass and the buildings are mainly of wood and perspex. Major buildings and commemorative arches and columns, surviving or known from archaeological research, are represented in some detail. Areas which were largely residential and about which little is known are represented notionally.

The centre of the ancient city (viewed here from the south) is defined by the curve of the Tiber to the west and the early Republican Servian Wall to the east. In the foreground is the Circus Maximus, used for chariot races. Behind it, to the north, is the Palatine Hill, a fashionable residential area during the Republic, but largely given over to the palaces of the emperors in the imperial period. The Aqua Claudia aqueduct supplied it with water. Another aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo, flowing from the north, supplied the Campus Martius, the large area within the bend of the river.

The Roman Forum, the commercial and political centre of Rome, lies between the Colosseum and the Capitoline Hill. On the Capitoline is the large Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. To the side of the old Roman Forum are fora built by Julius Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva and Trajan. The last of these has in it a marble column, ca 30 m. high, carved with a spiralling relief showing Trajan’s campaigns on the Danube frontier. Near the Tiber Island is the Theatre of Marcellus, still there today, and the Theatre of Balbus, and a little further away the Theatre of Pompey with its great arcaded forecourt where Julius Caesar was murdered. This was the first permanent theatre built in Rome. Beyond another theatre is the Stadium of Domitian, the outline of which is preserved today by the Piazza Navona. To the east of this is the domed and gilded bronze roof of the Pantheon, a cylindrically shaped temple made of brick-faced concrete which survives in almost its original state.

The main road north out of Rome, the Via Flaminia, is at an angle a few degrees to the west of the centre line of the model. At the edge of the model it passes Augustus’ marble Altar of Peace. Next to it is the great circular Mausoleum of Augustus. When the Altar of Peace was excavated in 1937 from under a Renaissance palace it was re-erected on the other side of the mausoleum, beside the Tiber. Across the river, on the left-hand side of the model is the Mausoleum of Hadrian, now the Castel Sant’ Angelo, near the Vatican today. The two large building complexes towards the right-hand side of the model are the vast Baths of Diocletian, still there opposite Rome’s main railway station, and the Baths of Trajan, built above the preserved remains of Nero’s Golden House. The Baths of Caracalla, which still stand to an impressive height, are some distance to the southeast of the Circus Maximus, and so not on the model.

Photographs of the model in Rome appear for example in L.B. Dal Maso, Rome of the Caesars (transl. M. Hollingworth, Rome 1974) and B. Brizzi, Ancient Rome Yesterday and Today: The City in the Times of Constantine and the Present-Day Archaeological Monuments (Rome 1971). There is interesting discussion of models of Rome in F. Hinard and M. Royo (eds.), Rome: l’espace urbain et ses représentations (Paris 1991). For a recent electronic version, see Ph. Fleury, La rome Antique. Plan relief et reconstitution virtuelle (Caen 2005) and www.unicaen.fr/rome/index.php. More recently and still developing there is the digital project Topographie der Stadt Rom: http://www.rom.geographie.uni-muenchen.de/. There is also the project Rome Reborn, www.romereborn.virginia.edu which carries the addresses of other websites useful for the topography of the ancient city. The fundamental study H. Jordan, Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum (Berlin 1871 and various other editions) is now available in digital form on the web.

An important resource is A. Carandini (ed.), The Atlas of Ancient Rome: Biography and Portraits of the City, i-ii (revised ed., Princeton 2017). L. Haselberger and J. Humphrey (eds), Imaging Ancient Rome. Documentation – Visualization – Imagination. Proceedings of the Third Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture (JRA Suppl. 61, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 2006) also deals with visual digitisation of what we know of the ancient city. There has also been continuing work on the ancient (Severan) marble plan of Rome, the Forma Urbis Romae, of which some 1186 fragments are known to survive: http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/ This enormous map, measuring about 18.1 x 13m, was carved in the years AD 203-211 and covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in Rome. It depicted the ground-plan of every architectural feature in the ancient city, from large public monuments to small shops and courtyards. The primary earlier publication is G. Carettoni, La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (Rome 1960). An important discussion of the plan is J. Trimble, “Process and Transformation on the Severan Marble Plan of Rome”, in: R.W. Unger, Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods, edited by Richard J.A. Talbert (Leiden 2008) 67-97.

Useful readily accessible guides to the ancient remains are Alta MacAdam, Blue Guide Rome, Norton & Co. (unabridged edition, 512 pp.), 2009 and Amanda Claridge et al., Rome, Oxford University Press, 2010. For a thorough analytical treatment and (now somewhat out-dated) bibliography see also E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (2nd ed., London 1968), L. Richardson, Jr, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore 1992) and more recently the major resource edited by E.M. Steinby, Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae, i-vi (Rome 1993-2000).

Other general books worth examining are F. Castagnoli, Roma antica. Profilo urbanistica (Rome 1987); F. Coarelli et al., Roma repubblicana dal 270 a.C. all'età augustea (Rome 1987); id., Guida archeologica di Roma (Milan 1989); id., Roma (Rome 2008); id., Rome and Environs: an archaeological Guide (Berkeley 2014); R. Lanciani, Forma urbis Romae (Rome 1893-1901, now in a new edition, 1990); O.F. Robinson, Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration (London - New York 1992); T. Hölscher, Monumenti Statali e Pubblico (Rome 1994); Claire Holleran and Amanda Claridge (eds), A Companion to the City of Rome (Hoboken, NJ ; Chichester, West Sussex, 2018).

Coarelli has also published two recent volumes on the history of excavation in Rome: Gli scavi di Roma 1878-1921 (Rome 2004) and Gli scavi di Roma 1922-1975 (Rome 2006).

There is a straightforward and reliable introduction to the topography of pre-Augustan Rome by M. Torelli, “The Topography and Archaeology of Republican Rome”, in: N. Rosenstein and R. Morstein-Marx (eds), A Companion to the Roman Republic (Oxford 2006) 81-101. The impact of Julius Caesar and Augustus on the plan of Rome was a vitally important one which set the pattern for all later developments. For a good survey of the changes they made, see F. Coarelli, “Rom. Die Stadtplanung von Caesar bis Augustus”, in: Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (Exhib.Cat. Berlin, 1988) 68-80. L. Haselberger et al. (eds), Mapping Augustan Rome (JRA Suppl. 50, Portsmouth RI, 2002; second ed. 2008); L. Haselberger, Urbem adornare: Rome's urban metamorphosis under Augustus (JRA Suppl. 64, Portsmouth, R.I., 2007). J.B. Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge 2004) takes a socio-historical approach. There is now an up-to-date website set up by David Romano: http://digitalaugustanrome.org/. One may also note M.T. Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome (Princeton 1987).

On the Forum Romanum, see P. Zanker, Forum Romanum : die Neugestaltung durch Augustus (Monumenta artis antiquae 5, Tübingen 1972); and more recently A.J. Ammerman, “On the Origins of the Forum Romanum”, American Journal of Archaeology 90, 1990, 627-645; id. “The Comitium in Rome from the Beginning”, American Journal of Archaeology 100, 1996, 121-136; F. Coarelli, Il Foro Romano: periodo arcaico (Rome 1986); id., Il Foro Romano. II. Periodo repubblicano e augusteo (Rome 1992). On the Palatine, M.A. Tomei, Palatino (Rome 1992). On the Forum Boarium, F. Coarelli, Il Foro Boario dalle origini alla fine della Repubblica (Rome 1992). On the Imperial Fora, J.C. Anderson, The Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora (Latomus 182, Brussels 1984); C.M. Amici, Il Foro di Cesare (Rome 1991); id., Foro di Traiano: Basilica Ulpia e biblioteche (Rome 1982); E. La Rocca, The Imperial Fora (Rome 1995); L. Ungaro et al., The Places of Imperial Consensus. The Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Trajan: Ctalogue (Rome 1995); E. La Rocca et al., The Places of Imperial Consensus: The Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Trajan: Historical Topographical Introduction (Rome 1996); J.E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments (Berkeley 1997); G.J. Gorski and J.E. Packer, The Roman Forum: a reconstruction and architectural guide (New York 2015). On the Campus Martius, F. Coarelli, Il Campo Marzio: dalle origine alla fine della Repubblica (Rome 1997); P.W. Jacobs, II, and D.A. Conlin, Campus Martius: The Field of Mars in the Life of Ancient Rome (New York 2014). And then dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum

On particular districts, their character, living conditions and loca administration, there is an interesting study by J.B. Lott, Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (New York – Cambridge 2004).

For aqueducts and the impact of the evolving water system, www.iath.virginia.edu/waters/ although it is so heavy with data that it can prove slow to examine.