Introduction

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the professor of Roman topography and head of the Municipal Archaeological Committee Rodolfo Lanciani was close to completing two of the most important projects of his career. The first was a reconstruction of the third-century Forma Urbis Romae — a giant marble relief showing the plan of the imperial capital that had been completely destroyed but whose fragments (both known and subsequently discovered) Lanciani and his team had painstakingly pieced together. The partially reconstructed ancient plan was presented to the public in 1903 at a special conference held in the headquarters of the municipality on the his-toric Campidoglio hill (Palombi 2006: 284). Lanciani’s second project was a set of 46 detailed maps of Roman topography, indicating the presumed location of long-forgotten ancient monuments (from the foundation of Rome until the fourth century CE) against the visible surface of the contemporary city. The illustrations were published in serial format between 1893 and 1901 under the title Forma Urbis Romae, offering an incredibly detailed two-dimensional reconstruction of the imperial city on a 1:1000 scale (Lanciani 1893–1901).