Plausum date. Notes on urban magnificence
A historical survey of the central archaeological area of Rome is combined with a chronological summary of
the commissions of its monuments, with the support of the sources. This overview is useful to understand
the recent transformation, the archaeological surveys, the excavations, the restorations, the changes in the
structure made in the area, with the uncovering of the Roman Forum and the invention of a new urban
landscape in the early nineteenth century around Campo Vaccino, the cattle market.
Many monuments
were able to receive critical scientific editions through the works executed and financed by a special Law for
the Antiquities of Rome (1981), and were subjected to complex restoration works with huge investments
by the Archaeological Superintendency, with the collection of the necessary documentation for their study,
with the collaboration of Italian and foreign research institutes.
These studies and restorations promoted big scientific progress on Roman topography, with the adoption of sometimes unsurpassed archaeological
procedures and critical methods. The acquisition of a vast complex of knowledge in the second half of the
twentieth century allows for a summary of the current state of topographical studies on the city of Rome.
Detailed insights are proposed on Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Vespasian, Tito, Domitian, Trajan, up to the
work conducted for him by Apollodorus, a first generation Hellenized Nabataean architect.
