Between 203 and 211, under the reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus, a massive marble map of ancient Rome was created. It originally measured 18 m (60 ft) wide by 13 m (45 ft) high and was carved into 150 marble slabs mounted on an interior wall of the Temple of Peace.
Created at a scale of approximately 1 to 240, the map was detailed enough to show the floor plans of nearly every temple, bath, and insula in the central Roman city. The boundaries of the plan were decided based on the available space on the marble, instead of by geographical or political borders as modern maps usually are.
The Plan was gradually destroyed during the Middle Ages, with the marble stones being used as building materials or for making lime. In 1562, the young antiquarian sculptor Giovanni Antonio Dosio excavated fragments of the Forma Urbis from a site near the Church of SS Cosma e Damiano, under the direction of the humanist condottiere Torquato Conti, who had purchased excavation rights from the canons of the church. Conti made a gift of the recovered fragments to Alessandro Cardinal Farnese
Since that time, a total of about 10% of the original surface area of the plan has since been recovered, in the form of over one thousand marble fragments, which are kept in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums (just one of those fragments is shown above).
Now, thanks to the hard work of Italy’s Carabinieri Art Squad, another piece can be added to the collection. A recent Art Squad investigation led to the recovery of a Forma Urbis fragment in a private apartment…where it was being used to hold up a window. In further investigations, they also recovered another 618 antiquities destined to be sold on the black market.
Want to learn more about the Forma Urbis? The Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project is digitizing the fragments and using computer algorithms in an attempt to reassemble more of the map. They’ve currently got all 1186 surviving fragments online (we assume that excludes the recently recovered one) and they feature an extensive bibliography that will direct your reading.
