The Eternal City

"Rome may be renowned for individual sites like the Colosseum and St. Peter's Basilica, but its most captivating feature is its many overlapping-and surviving-layers of history. Over nearly 3,000 years, the Rome of the Caesars has given way to the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of the Grand Tourists, and several more incarnations down to the present. Along the way, it has also become perhaps the most frequently mapped city on the planet. This book is the first ever published to English to tell the story of Rome through its maps. Each chapter begins with a brief historical overview of one key era and features a selection of maps, details, digitizations, and other images-all produced in full color-that illuminate the themes of that era. From the city's first walls through its master plan for its third millennium, the Romes depicted in these maps all live on in the city that millions still visit and inhabit today"--