FORMA URBIS MUSEUM

A museum designed to display forma urbis and its fragments.

The Forma Urbis is one of the most extraordinary documents from imperial Rome and is a major source for the history of the city. The museum is located in Rome, Italy, next to the ruins of the Roman Forum. A series of flat columns are used to create the rhythmic and geometric beauty of the facade. Combined with the hillside topography, the museum uses a combination of double-height space and small space to display the forma urbis and its fragments. The split-level space and atrium exhibition hall are used to create a rich indoor space experience for visitors.

Forma Urbis Romae

The Forma Urbis Romae or Forma Urbis Severiana was a very large map of the imperial city of Rome (18 m long by 13 m high) carved on 151 marble slabs arranged in 11 rows, made under the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus, (between 203 and 211 CE). The 235 sqm map hung on a wall of an aula of the Templum Pacis (Forum della Pace). The same wall was later transformed into an exterior wall of the church of SS. Cosmas and Damian.

151 marble slabs are mounted onto a wall of a large room (aula) inside the Templum Pacis in Rome. Onto this wall of slabs is carved a detailed map of the imperial city of Rome. The incised lines are filled with red paint so as to stand out against the white background.

203-211 CE

The Templum Pacis, together with the aula of the Marble Plan, is abandoned and gradually deteriorates. Many of the marble slabs are robbed for reuse as building material or for the production of lime. The rest gradually fall from the wall and are with time buried at its foot.

Late Medieval Period

Many of the marble fragments are discovered in what by now has become a garden behind the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The pieces pass into the hands of the Farnese family and are moved to the Farnese palace. The discovery unleashes a storm of antiquarian interest in the Plan whose existence, until then, was unknown.

1562

The ownership of the Marble Plan is transferred to the people of Rome and the fragments are moved to the Capitoline Museum. Here, a major project to assemble and exhibit the fragments is undertaken by museum curator Pietro Forrier with the help of Giovanni Battista Nolli, soon to be famous for his own map of Rome.

1741-1742

Computer scientists and archaeologists at the University of Stanford are working in collaboration with the Soprintendenza of the Comune di Roma on the “Forma Urbis Romae Project”, employing digital technologies to try and reconstruct the map through computer-aided reconstruction algorithms able to place each fragment at the right place.

1990