Last month a new museum opened in Rome on the peaceful slopes of the Caelian Hill, a languid stone’s throw from the hubbub of the Colosseum. It is the Museum of the Forma Urbis Romae. Extremely interesting, beautifully displayed and small: what’s not to like? I’m a big fan of a small museum.
The Forma Urbis Romae was a vast map of the city of Rome inscribed during the reign of Septimius Severus on one hundred and fifty slabs of gleaming Proconnesian marble quarried at the sea of Marmara in modern-day Turkey.
On these slabs the footprint of every building—public and private—in the city was outlined: every column, every staircase and every fountain. These slabs were hung inside the Temple of Peace. This once internal wall is today incorporated in the external wall of the complex of the early sixth century Basilica of Saints Cosma and Damian, the first church to be built in the Forum.
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