Ancient Web: Rome Art Lover Built a Four-Part Illustrated City History

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A conventional timeline of Rome might begin with a legendary founding and end with a modern republic. Roberto Piperno's timeline does that while repeatedly asking a more useful question: where in the actual city can you see a trace of each event?

Visit the Abridged History of Rome index.

The page is an enormous table of contents within Piperno's Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller. It divides the city's story into Ancient Rome, Medieval Rome, Modern Rome, and a chronology covering 1871 through 2007. Each division unfolds into a dense collection of links.

History with street addresses

The ancient section moves from early settlements and the Roman Republic through the emperors and the fall of the Western Empire. Its chapter titles include The Romans Meet the Elephants, Pompey and Caesar, and A Century of Turmoil.

Many subsections attach events to surviving objects and sites. The transition to empire includes the Forum's Basilica Julia; the account of imperial succession points readers toward actual places and inscriptions. The structure makes abstract political history physically navigable.

The medieval chapters tackle Byzantine rule, the Investiture Controversy, and the papacy's move to Avignon. Modern chapters pass through the Renaissance, the sack of Rome, the Counter-Reformation, and the Baroque period. Nearly every section offers an Iconography link, emphasizing how paintings, sculpture, and monuments preserve interpretations of the events.

A city encyclopedia written one link at a time

The organizing principle matters. This is not merely a textbook pasted into HTML. The historical outline lives alongside a much larger collection of routes, photographs, engravings, and architectural notes. A reader can move from a political crisis to a bridge, church, fountain, or portrait connected with it.

The page identifies Piperno as the photographer and copyright holder of the site's images. It was revised in May 2020, yet it retains the dense linked-table format of personal reference websites.

This section has a distinct purpose from the site's separate galleries of Vasi engravings or laughing stone masks, also covered in the Ancient Web collection. Those examine specific visual subjects. The history index supplies the chronological framework that connects the places.

A polished map app might be faster for directions. Piperno's reference is better at giving the streets something to remember.

Explore the four-part Rome history and its illustrated chapter links.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.