 Nuova
Pianta di Roma Data in Luce da Giambattista Nolli l’Anno
MDCCXLVIII
Allan Ceen
Department of Architecture,
Pennsylvania State University
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Letarouilly’s
1841 Plan of Rome |
Maps of the city of Rome may be divided
into two distinct groups: those preceding Nolli’s 1748
Grande Pianta, and those following
it. The second group follows Nolli in more than one sense:
chronologically and graphically. Most of the maps between
1748 and 1870 either simply trace the Nolli map or use it
as a base. Some cartographers, like John Roque who copied
the small Nolli plan in 1750, acknowledge their debt. Others,
like Paul Letarouilly who copied the Grande Pianta almost
exactly in 1841, give Nolli no credit at all. The influence
of the Nolli map persisted well into the 20th century. The
government used it as the base for maps of the city until
the 1970s. Architects still point to the map as the ideal
figure-ground image for urban representation.
Before Nolli, the favorite way of representing
the city was the view-map (bird’s eye view), as opposed
to the plan-map (ichnographic or orthogonal view). From 1400
to 1748, there are only five plan-maps of Rome and two of
these are minor. The three important ones are Bufalini 1551,
De Rossi 1668, and Barbey 1697. None of these approach the
accuracy and completeness of the Grande
Pianta. After 1748, the majority of maps are plan-maps,
especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. Tourists and pilgrims
tend not to favor plan-maps, so for them a hybrid of the plan-map
and view-map is most commonly available. This is a plan with
the major monuments shown in three dimensional images, often
misleadingly oriented. This type harks back to the Cruyl map
of 1665.
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Bufalini’s
1551 Plan of Rome |
The Grande Pianta
was published in twelve large (80 x 54 cm) sheets together
with five sheets of indices and two smaller maps on single
sheets. One of the latter is a reduction of the Grande
Pianta, while the other, drawn to about the same scale,
is Nolli’s careful reproduction of Bufalini’s
1551 plan of Rome. In the title Nolli acknowledges his debt
to Bufalini as his principal predecessor. At the same time,
his reorientation of the plan from East to North, and his
use of the same graphic convention of shading for the inhabited
area used in both this own plans, invites the viewer to compare
the Nolli/Bufalini map to the small Nolli, and to draw the
obvious conclusion that the latter is the better of the two.
Indeed, Bufalini’s 1551 map is very inaccurate in terms
of distances and angles, but we must recall that it is the
first plan of the city since antiquity, showing every street
and city block, every church and major palazzo.
As happened later with Nolli, it became the base map for many
of his successors' efforts. This is dramatically shown by
the fact that in the first half of the 16th century there
are no maps of the contemporary city, while within 50 years
after Bufalini, 20 maps of Rome are printed, most of which
reveal their dependence upon his map by repeating the same
inaccuracies.
In like manner Nolli’s Grande
Pianta was a watershed for the cartography of the city.
Nolli was the first map-maker of Rome to orient his map with
North at the top (instead of the usual East), and to rely
heavily on the magnetic compass for obtaining bearings on
specific reference points in the city. The compass appears
three times on his Grande Pianta:
once at the bottom of the map as an actual compass being consulted
by two putti, and once as a compass
rose placed in the open space in front of S.
Giovanni in Laterano (NN 5). On the latter,
true North (T for Tramontana)
is clearly distinguished from magnetic North (represented
by the thin vertical arrow) on which the map is oriented.
The surveyor’s Plane Table being used by the putto
(lower right on the map), was also equipped with a magnetic
compass so that for every position in the city to which it
was moved, it could be always oriented the same way: North-South
(Ceen 1991, pp.5-6).
As his principal North-South reference line Nolli used the
sun-dial of S. Maria degli Angeli
(in the Baths of Diocletian (NN 203)),
which he refers to a as the "meridiana
della Certosa" in his original drawing (Frutaz
1962). This accurate North-South line, inlaid in brass in
the marble floor of the church, was set up in 1702 by Francesco
Bianchini for the purpose of precisely determining the equinoxes
used for fixing the feast-days of the Catholic Church. Aware
of the 13° difference between true North and magnetic
North, Nolli was able to make all his sightings refer back
to this base line, or to parallels of it placed on other parts
of his drawing. This technique, coupled with the triangulation
of prominent city features such as towers and domes, enabled
Nolli to obtain the accuracy for which his plan is famous.
The accuracy of the Grande Pianta
far exceeds that of earlier maps of the city, and has not
been significantly improved upon since its publication. But
if accuracy were its only attribute, this map would be unremarkable
among a number of others. What really makes it stand out is
the wealth of detailed information to be found on its twelve
sheets. No other map of the city approaches the Grande
Pianta in this respect. A few specific examples will
suffice to make this point about the map’s fine details:
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| a) the presence of the small corner
fountain (of the bees) at the corner of Via
Sistina and Piazza Barberini
(now moved to the Via Veneto
corner) |
b) the presence of two elevated galleries
connecting the two halves of the Carceri
Nuove (NN 662) |
c) the presence of four tiny dots
in Piazza S. Pietro which
are the centers of arcs of circles for the oval defining
the plan of the colonnades |
On a larger scale, Nolli records otherwise
unnoticeable asymmetry in the Spanish
steps and Piazza
del Campidoglio. But perhaps
Nolli’s greatest contribution is the identification
of semi-public space in the form of church and theater interiors,
palace courtyards, entries and stairways. Until relatively
recently (1970s) palace courtyards were open to the public,
so that all white areas in the Grande
Pianta represented the continuum
of accessible urban space. In the memory of this author, walking
through Rome taking shortcuts through courtyards to reach
one’s destination was one of the delights of living
here.
The location of some of these passageways and their alignment
with existing street-axes suggests the presence of medieval
streets, since absorbed by private buildings. One example:
Via del Paradiso (NN 628)
lines up with the entryway of Palazzo
Massimi alle Colonne (NN 625).
The connected courtyards leading to Piazza
dei Massimi suggests the former
presence of a street which once linked Campo
dei Fiori to Piazza
Navona.
Unbeknownst to him, Nolli picked
a fortunate time for the production of his map. Rome had gone
through a period of substantial urban development since the
mid-15th century. The mid-18th century marked the beginning
of a long period of stasis when few major urban changes occurred
within the city. Thus the Grande
Pianta summed up all of the
urban development of the Renaissance and Baroque periods,
and remained a valid representation of the city until Rome
became the capital of Italy in 1870. It is still the most
useful map for studying Rome’s historic center.
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