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Giovanni Battista Piranesi arrived in Rome in 1740 at the age of twenty and spent the rest of his life there, producing approximately one thousand etchings of the ancient and modern city that changed how Europeans understood ruins and, through ruins, understood time. His Vedute …
The Romans built bridges the way they built everything: systematically, durably, and in sufficient quantity that their combined effect transformed the …
Roman concrete has been underwater for two thousand years in some locations and is stronger now than when it was poured. This is not a figure of …
The Roman theater had Greek ancestors and Roman ambitions, which meant it was grander, more permanent, and more politically charged than the tradition …
Frontinus, the Roman senator appointed curator aquarum — superintendent of waters — in 97 AD, opened his report on Rome’s water supply with a sentence …
The arch is not a Roman invention. The Babylonians built arches. The Egyptians built arches. The Etruscans used the arch centuries before Rome became …
The city of Rome at its height had a population of somewhere between half a million and a million people — the estimates vary and the ancient census …
The Pantheon is the best-preserved ancient building in the world, and it is better preserved than most medieval buildings, because it has been in …
Rome did not conquer its empire and then build roads to administer it. The roads and the conquest advanced together, each enabling the other in a …