Since its first appearance in Italian, this volume has attracted widespread recognition for the beauty of its design, its wealth of information and scholarship. The team coordinated by Carandini and Carafa deserves the admiration of anyone interested in the city of Rome, its history, archaeology and topography. The publication of this work in English – in two beautifully produced and richly illustrated volumes – will allow non-Italian readers to profit from this useful resource and get acquainted with a prolific school of archaeological investigation that plays a significant role in modern debates about the eternal city. There are some issues too, quite problematic at times: the maps are not always easy to use; the organisation of the information is confusing at points; more importantly, the Atlas is the product of a very specific view of Rome's past, which is far from consensual and has generated much criticism in recent years.
The Atlas is part of a much larger project, an online information system that will bring together all the information available for every single building (whether archaeologically attested or not) throughout Roman antiquity. The project assigns an ID to each structure, or ‘topographical unit’, known to have existed (although some are only mentioned in legendary narratives), referencing these units in accordance with the map of Rome. According to the editors, their intention is to make this electronic resource available to the whole scholarly community when it is ready. Until then, the published volumes represent a magnificent instrument for research in their own right. Carandini and Carafa coordinated a team of 30 authors, supported by a large number of collaborators from Italian and foreign institutions, as well as architectural studios and illustrators. Such an impressive list of names and pool of talent show that a work like this could only be produced in Rome, under the auspices of the Sapienza University.
The stated aim of the volumes, as expressed by Carandini, is to ‘resuscitate Rome as the ancient city was conceived!’ (p. 3). Every piece of evidence available for the topography and appearance of the city is put to use, from archaeological remains to references in texts, from representations on coins to drawings by antiquarians. The city of Rome was not limited to its major monuments, and Carandini emphasises the need to consider all types of structure, seeing topography as a contextual system (p. 2). The model here is R. Lanciani's Forma Urbis Romae (1990), which located all archaeological finds made until the end of the nineteenth century on a map of the city. The aim of the Atlas is bolder: to locate and identify every structure known (however poorly) in its different historical phases. Carandini cites two sources of inspiration in the introduction, the imagined Capitol as described by Freud, in which all phases of the hill remained visible (p. 17), and Borges’s description of a 1:1 map commissioned by an unnamed empire (identified by Carandini as China on p. 18). The fact that one is a metaphor for the working of the mind and the other a comment on the futility of completeness should remind the reader of the risks of such an ambitious enterprise.
Volume 1 presents in images and texts a comprehensive view of the city and its evolution, divided into four main parts: an introductory section; thematic chapters that discuss different aspects of the Urbs (‘The City as a Whole’); the individual presentation of the city's fourteen regions (‘The City and its Parts’); and a long and up-to-date bibliography (a useful research tool in its own right). These are lavishly illustrated, with ancient drawings, photographs and reconstructions. The book opens with a preface and an introduction, ‘Rome in Flight and Rome in Freefall’, by Carandini, explaining how the project was conceived. Critics of the initiative are attacked for their intellectual conservatism and myopic attitude; they are termed ‘scientists’ (between quotation marks in the original), who would call the editors ‘inventors’. The polemical tone of these pieces should not distract us from their main point: there is much that is known about ancient Rome, and collaborative work is the key to expanding the (still fundamental) maps of Lanciani's Forma Urbis. Topographical dictionaries present monuments in isolation, and there is a great need for a synthetic view of the city. The two following chapters describe how the information was collected (Carafa) and the methodologies for referencing it in cartographic form (M. Crespi and U. Fabiani).
‘The City as a Whole’ presents a series of thematic surveys that lay the groundwork for the discussion of the different areas of the city. These are generally efficient and reliable presentations, discussing the natural landscape (G. Urzu and M. Parotto); the ‘historical landscape’, including the administrative and civic boundaries of the city (Carandini), the pomerium and the customs duty (M.C. Capanna) and the horti (Capanna); and the infrastructure, including walls (with chapters by D. Bruno, D. Filippi, G. Cifani and Carafa), roads (Capanna) and the aqueducts (M. Turci). The necropoleis (D. Manacorda), the city's provisions (C. Panella), the end of the ancient city (R. Santangeli Valenzani) and the ruins of the city (M. Papini) make up the rest of the section, with an appendix on building techniques (S. Bossi) and another on architectural orders (P. Pensabene and E. Gallocchio). Carandini's chapter on the curiae, pagi, tribus, vici and regiones stands out for reaffirming some of the author's controversial opinions in uncompromising fashion. Texts from later periods are used to decode the structural/unconscious categories and boundaries that shaped the city and its community throughout its history – a point of view that informs many of the following sections of the book. It is curious that there is no discussion of the city's religious landscape, as temples and churches played such a constitutive role in all periods of the city's history; nothing on the origins of the city either, in spite of Carandini's own contribution to this debate.
The second and most important section of the volume is dedicated to the fourteen Augustan regions. These are not presented in numerical order; instead, the discussion starts with the centre (regions VIII and X) and then moves on to the montes (IV, III, V, II and I), the area around the Aventine hill (XII, XIII and XI), the surroundings of the Campus Martius (VI, VII and IX) and the Transtiberim (XIV). Focusing on the regiones makes topographic and administrative sense, making the most of the Regionary catalogues, but it has its pitfalls. Readers interested in what we today call the Roman Forum, for example, will need to look at the chapters on regions VIII (Forum Romanum Magnum, by Filippi) and IV (Templum Pacis, by F. Fraioli), since the former leaves out the Basilica Aemilia and the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (but includes the Capitol and the Forum Holitorium). Region IV includes the northern side of the Sacra via (the Basilica of Maxentius and the Temple of Venus and Rome), but the house of the Vestals and the Horrea Piperataria across the street belonged to region X (Palatium, by Bruno). This artificial division is repeated in the tables of Volume 2: buildings and monuments are cut out of their topographical reality, in spite of the contextual emphasis advocated throughout the work.
This is particularly surprising, since one of the strengths of these chapters is precisely their comprehensive nature. By treating topography as a contextual system, every structure – regardless of its size or importance – is considered. The reader is thus treated to a fascinating picture of the via Appia as it approached the city, with its fountains and shrines (region I, Porta Capena, by S. Gozzini); the temples and monumental complexes of the imperial Campus Martius, usually the focus of most scholars, are here shown side-by-side with horrea and insulae (region IX, Circus Flaminius, by M.T. D'Alessio). Each chapter starts with an overview of the later history and excavations of the region, followed by a brief note on its limits and dimensions; the brunt of each text consists of the presentation of the topography of the area, organised by historical period (from the pre-historic to the late-antique phase). The chapters in this section collect an impressive amount of information, and readers will have much to learn about all parts of the city. This is particularly valuable for less studied areas, such as Trastevere (region XIV, by Carafa and P. Pacchiarotti), but even the historical centre and areas that have recently attracted historical and topographical studies, such as the Aventine (regions XII and XIII, by Bruno) and the Quirinal and Viminal (region VI, by Capanna), are presented with a degree of detail that will make this a useful resource. Like F. Coarelli's Il Foro Romano (published more than 30 years ago), Filippi's chapter on region VIII can be read as a history of the city and its empire, as kings, Republican politicians and emperors added to the functions and monumental outlook of the area.
Not all the information is equally convincing, however, and the contributors are less successful when discussing the early history or the more problematic late-antique and medieval sources. Some authors make use of the questionable literary tradition concerning the origins and first centuries of the city to identify structures and to interpret the spatial organisation of the archaic community. As such, the religious topography of region VIII is explained by narratives of ‘historical’ events assigned to the reigns of Romulus and his successors (p. 151). The domus of Tarquin is identified next to the Sacra via (p. 153), and readers are told that the actual physical structure excavated in the area later passed on to the property of Lucius Iunius Brutus (p. 156). Legendary figures like Servius Tullius are not only assumed to be historical, but the accounts of their reigns are taken as a base for describing the social organisation of the archaic city (p. 310). Later identifications like ‘Velienses’, ‘Querquetulani’ and ‘Latinienses’ are treated as actual social and ethnic groups, and projected backwards to the origins of the city and its regions. For a later period, the information that the third-century Gordiani owned the domus of Pompey in the Campus Martius, recorded in the Historia Augusta (Gordiani tres, 3.6), is accepted without pause (p. 505), whereas references in the Passio of S. Sebastian and in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae are used to locate the house of a (most likely fictional) prefect in the Campus Martius and to describe one of its rooms (p. 523).
Volume 2 comprises over 340 tables followed by an index, providing more than just a visual companion to the texts of Volume 1. The plans, drawings, photographs and reconstructions collected here offer a rich narrative of the physical and topographic history of the city, since its earliest phases. Tables 1–18 present the spatial and social organisation of the early city (as defined by its kings), the expansions of the pomerium, the city walls, aqueducts, building techniques and architectural orders. Tables 19–284 present the different parts of the city, as well as plans and reconstructions of buildings and monuments, accompanied by the available supporting evidence, such as coins, fragments of the marble plan and early modern drawings. The standard of publication is very high: plans are colour-coded, so as to differentiate actual archaeological remains from suggestions based on comparisons, iconographic sources or reconstruction. This is particularly important, as readers (especially students) should be aware of the boldness of some of the reconstructions presented here – some openly speculative, such as the archaic complex of Vesta, including a hut and a Lucus (Table 2), and the houses of the rex sacrorum and of Tarquinius Priscus (Table 6). A further 37 tables present a detailed map of late-antique Rome.
Just like in Volume 1, here too the reader is treated to a comprehensive, detailed and dynamic picture of the city. From the more general maps (as in Table 80, showing the Palatine hill between ad 81 and 96) to plans of specific structures (such as the fifth-century church of S. Agata dei Goti in Table 198a) there is much to learn about Rome. A good example is offered by Tables 199–206, which provide a fascinating picture of region VII (Via Lata), depicting the architecture of the temple of Sol (Table 206) as well as the remains of the insulae discovered during the excavation of Galleria Sordi (Table 204). The wealth of information does not always contribute to legibility: Table 148 (region I, Porta Capena between ad 180 and 312) contains so many identifications (confirmed and hypothetical) that the reader will have difficulty in finding specific structures.
A good example of the strengths and weaknesses of these tables is Table 1, covering the areas of the Capitol, Forum and Velabrum in the eighth century bc: a number of tombs are recorded (including of children), as well as the location of a wall, fragments of pavement and other structures next to what was possibly a quarry. The area is thus shown to have been a lively settlement from a very early date. Next to these archaeological finds, however, we find a domus tentatively attributed to Titus Tatius, the tomb of Tarpeia and a number of cults and shrines that are only mentioned in later texts. We can presume that these identifications will be discussed in detail when the information system is made available online, but until then readers will have to remain extra vigilant when using the Atlas. And yet, it is this same drive to identify and locate every piece of information that allowed the authors to produce Table 20, a map showing dedications made in the Area Capitolina between 240 bc and ad 14 – a fascinating insight into the appearance of a well-documented part of the city.
Having said this, it is worth asking: how does the Atlas compare to other works in this area? This is not a replacement to topographical dictionaries like that of S. Platner and T. Ashby or especially the volumes of the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae: readers will still need to refer to these when searching for detailed discussions of ancient structures and the relevant evidence. It does not replace Lanciani's Forma Urbis Romae either: that continues to be a model of simplicity and concision, focusing on information that is securely attested (even if its date of publication makes it out of date for important parts of the city). What the Atlas offers, instead, is the first real attempt to present everything that is known – or that we can know – about ancient Rome in its temporal and spatial contexts. Even its faults might be seen as a product of this virtue: the desire to explore all the evidence available, regardless of its reliability, to its limit. The team coordinated by Carandini and Carafa has produced an invaluable book, an extremely useful research tool that will inspire and accompany students and researchers for many years.
