Process And Transformation On The Severan Marble Plan Of Rome

Abstract

The Severan Marble Plan is an extraordinary map. Carved between 203 and 211 CE, it represented the imperial city of Rome in plan view, depicting every temple and warehouse, every street and alley, every tenement building and luxury dwelling, every ground-floor room, doorway and internal staircase. This chapter draws on the approach of J.B. Harley to explore the Severan Marble Plan as a constructed image of the city as much as an indicator of what stood where. It was carved onto 150 marble slabs mounted in eleven rows on a wall in a large room inside the Templum Pacis in the political heart of Rome. The chapter focuses on the Severan Marble Plan?s relationship to earlier Roman urban maps. The Severan map shows selective adoptions and adaptations of cartographic tradition, making it unique in the surviving evidence. Keywords: cartographic tradition; Roman urban maps; severan marble plan

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