Walks in Rome

Explore Map

Explore Map

In 1870, August Hare published Walks in Rome, an immensely popular guidebook enriched with a wealth of literary quotations. City of the Soul similarly provides an itinerary through visual and literary Rome, allowing visitors to take a virtual walk through the city. An interactive map, based on a digital version of Paul-Marie Letarouilly’s 1841 plan of Rome, permits visitors to the exhibition to contextualize a selection of the works on display in City of the Soul. Clicking on highlighted features on the map brings up descriptions by nineteenth-century authors and images of both the objects in the exhibition and the actual monuments. This cluster of information encourages visitors to consider the objects in City of the Soul within the context of their historical period, and equally importantly to make comparisons between the appearance of the selected Roman monuments then and now.

Letarouilly’s plan admirably depicts the essential topographical features of nineteenth-century Rome: the sinuous course of the Tiber, the celebrated Seven Hills, and the densely built-up core of the city nestled in the bend of the river. To the south and east, a picturesque landscape, studded with ruins rising from vineyards and gardens, extends to the circuit of the city’s ancient walls. On the left bank of the Tiber, the Castel Sant’Angelo guards the approach to St. Peter’s and the Vatican. Allegorical personifications of ancient and modern Rome occupy the two lower corners.