1748
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Nuova pianta di Roma data in luce da Giambattista Nolli l’anno MDCCXLVII, known as La Pianta Grande di Roma is a 1748 by Giovanni Battista Nolli, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You’re looking at a giant map of Rome—twelve sheets pieced together like a puzzle, almost six feet wide. Every street, church, and courtyard is drawn with ruler-straight lines and tiny labels. Nolli spent over ten years walking the city with surveying tools to get every angle right. He even shaded the buildings so you can tell public spaces from private ones at a glance. If you like how cities can be measured and drawn this carefully, check out the subject of *Italy, 18th century*.
The monumental Pianta Grande di Roma, or Large Plan of Rome, which measures about 5 x 7 feet when its twelve plates are assembled, is a landmark in both cartography and printmaking. The map is considered the first scientific rendering of Rome, establishing new standards of accuracy and thoroughness when it was published in 1748. Devised by the Lombard architect and surveyor Giovanni Battista Nolli (Italian, 1701-56), the creation of the map required over ten years of surveying the city carried out by Nolli and a team of assistants with the help of new measuring devices. In Nolli’s…
To make this map, Pope Clement XII granted the mapmaker permission to measure courtyards and other interior, inaccessible spaces in monastic communities, even those in nuns’ convents, which was controversial at the time.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Giambattista Nolli, was an Italian architect and surveyor. He is best known for his ichnographic plan of Rome, the Pianta Grande di Roma which he began surveying in 1736 and engraved in 1748, and now universally known…
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