Visualising the urban developmen of ancient Rome

[Marcus Pica]

Since I became interested in ancient history in primary school I have always been looking for visual ideal reconstructions of how places looked liked like in the past and compared them to how they look like now. There is something magical about seeing how environments were built up. I was aware of the plastic models of archaic and imperial rome, but recently i found this site: https://www.altair4.com/en/modelli/roma-antica/

The videos are very interesting as they show the comparison of places now to how they supposedly looked like in imperial rome. I find the build up of Vatican particularly interesting as well as the numerous cases where you can find the visual clues of ancient buildings in the layout of today streets and plazas.

This series of images (based on the both old plastic models and further enhanced with computer software) is interesting as they may give players' imagination a bit of context. A lot of players on these forum imagine imperial Rome while playing Imperator, which is far from how the place looked like in the game's timeframe:

cca 400 years before the start of I:R

cca 200 years before the start of I:R

cca at the game end of I:R

cca 300 years after the game end of I:R

Bonus pic Western edge of the Palatine at the founding of the city (again cca 400 years before the start of I:R

 

[Lord Lambert]

Very Interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing!

Gotta point out this though:

at the founding of the city (again cca 400 years before the start of I:R

Wouldn't the founding of the city be 450 years before the start of I:R, as the date is 450 AUC, from the founding of Rome

 

[Marcus Pica]

Very Interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing!

Gotta point out this though:

Wouldn't the founding of the city be 450 years before the start of I:R, as the date is 450 AUC, from the founding of Rome

You are of course correct, however I thought a rounded number would be more elegant. An OCD I guess. Besides, things couldn't have changed that much in 50 years and the visualization of that time has more settlement agglomerations and huts then I would imagine there were at the time of Romulus' founding (taking the myth for actual history).

EDIT: Oh you are refering to the text above drawing. Yea that is an imagination at the founding

 

[Marcus Pica]

Another candy I made based on this. Putting the drawing of the western edge of the Palatine village on the approx. correct place on other reconstructions. Just for fun.