Mapping Ancient Rome

We just acquired a stunner of a book: the 1532 edition of Marco Fabio Clavo's Antiquae urbis Romae cum regionibus simulachrum [A Model of Ancient Rome and its Regions]. The book has a crazy history. The Renaissance piqued interest in ancient Rome in Europe and there was a desire to map the city as best they could. Raphael was particularly interested and may have played a part in the creation of the original plans for the book. It was first printed in 1527 right before Charles V's army went rogue and sacked Rome, destroying nearly the entire initial print run. Then the author died, the printer disappeared, and the author's nephew was left to try to pick up the pieces and get the book out. Five years later, our edition appeared.

The book is a series of woodcuts that show the growth of ancient Rome from a small city with four hills into the famed walled city of seven hills.  In addition, each region is detailed, though certainly not in a way that would give you directions to Pliny's house. The images are more like stylized infographics, giving you a feel for how big each region was. My guess is that in 1532 they didn't have a very keen sense of historical Rome's actual appearance, so they just made representations that seemed reasonable. It would be fun to compare these maps with the representations we have now after 500 years of purposeful and accidental archeology have uncovered more and more of the ancient city.

To see the streets that Caesar and Cicero roamed (Romed?) ask for Rare N6920 .R347 1532.