Architecture & Landscape Architecture Library

TuttoCittà
-- An Italian equivalent of MapQuest: the “Mappa” section will locate any address for you by filling in the city name (Italian spelling, of course, so it’s “Roma,” “Firenze” and “Milano”), the street name (“indirizzo”) and building number. Once the map comes up, you can zoom in and out. The “Percorso” function will estimate your travel time from one address to another, either by car or on foot (“pedonale”).

Google Earth
-- Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. This program provides a good aerial view of Rome as well as other major urban areas around the world.

RomeGuide - Maps
-- This site has a decent modern map of Rome showing major street names and monuments.

Forma Urbis Romae: Pianta Monumentale di Roma per il Grande Giubileo del 2000
-- This modern, hand-drawn, panoramic birds’-eye-view of Rome is a copperplate etching that was printed with traditional methods. It was produced by the Vatican Library for the Jubilee Year of 2000.

The 1852 Map of Rome
-- The “New Map” is an 1852 map of Rome, viewable in 4 quadrants.

Vasi 1781 Map of Rome & Engravings
-- This is the 1781 Vasi “map,” which is actually a modified birds’ eye view towards the west, also viewable in sections. Although it lacks the planimetric clarity and purity of the Nolli, it can provide other important architectural details (i.e, presence and profiles of towers, etc). The site shows Vasi’s engravings of individual buildings along with modern photographs; just search under individual monuments.

Nolli 1748 Map of Rome
-- Allan Ceen and the University of Oregon program have put together this incredibly comprehensive interactive Nolli Map website. You can search, zoom, turn on layers indicating city walls, fountains, rione boundaries, gardens, and even layer current satellite photos for comparisons. Utterly astounding. A new function also allows you to layer the Vasi map images over the same location.

Aquae Urbis Romae: The Waters of the City of Rome
-- This site is directed by Katherine Wentworth Rinne of the University of Virgina’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and provides a magnificent presentation of the history of water supplies and urban development in Rome.

Ostia
-- If you’re doing any work involving Ostia Antica, ancient Rome’s harbor city just to the west, you must visit this comprehensive website run by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Ostia Antica. In English, very easy to use -- you’ll find detailed plan drawings of every structure and 3-D computer reconstructions of whole neighborhoods, as well as information about the histories of individual buildings, inscriptions, visitors’ information – even a list of modern detective novels set in ancient Ostia!

Forma Urbis Romae - Severan Marble Plan of Rome
-- Researchers at Stanford University provide an online reconstructed version of the ancient Roman city map known from stone fragments.