Introduction

This thematic module investigates aspects of the city’s natural history, including geological and hydrographic issues. Formal gardens and villas and the cultivated landscape comprise additional topics. The Tiber River, the seven famous hills of Rome and their valleys, flood plains and related features serve to illuminate the city’s natural structure and its relationship to urban form from antiquity to the present.

The Forgotten Landscape of Rome: The Disabitato Jim Tice, Department of Architecture, University of Oregon Posted:4/15/2005

As a casual glance at the Nolli map shows, even as late as the 18th century the vast area between the urbanized center and the ancient Aurelian wall circuit was an area dominated by ancient ruins and open space. Historically this zone has been called the uninhabited place, or disabitato.