Italian Maps Online

[Eloisa Stawasz]

GeoportaleNazionale: the national GIS portal for Italy provides a host of helpful resources, including orthophotos from multiple years, DEMs at various resolutions, the IGM 25000 series maps, and maps of erosion risk areas, protected areas, etc. Online consultation mainly, but one can create and print maps. Very useful for planning real or classroom-exercise surveys.

Citt metropolitana di Roma Capitale Geoportale cartografico/Sistema Informativo Geografico: a rich site that provides historical maps of Rome over the centuries (Tempesta, Falda, Nolli, Piranesi, Lanciani and many more) in digital version, as well as current maps (aerial, nautical, vegetation, etc.) documenting the city of Rome and its surroundings.

Old Maps Online: a collaboration between the Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at the University of Portsmouth, UK and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland that provides for searching historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search.

Peutinger map: seamless whole, in color, with overlaid layers: a project by Richard Talbert at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Peutinger Map is the only map of the Roman world to come down to us from antiquity. Featuring land routes across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, it was rediscovered around 1500. After coming into the ownership of Konrad Peutinger, for whom it is named, it is today housed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

Le piante maggiori di Roma dei sec. XVI e XVII: riprodotte in fototipia. Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Danesi: 19XX-1931.

Reproductions of the main maps of Rome from the 16th and 17th Centuries. Print volumes of this publication are held at the AAR Library.

Reed College Digital Maps Collection: flood maps of ancient Rome scanned from Gregory S. Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), maps by the author. Search by "aldrete" and keywords pertaining to your specific interests.

Territori: il portale italiano dei catasti e della cartografia storica: a rich portal uniting cartographic collections from all major Italian state archives. [As of December 2023, the portal is no longer accessible.]

WorldMap: a platform developed by the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard. The platform permits to build custom maps, by editing and publishing geospatial information in a collaborative manner. WorldMap is open-source software.

Aquae Urbis Romae: the Waters of the City of Rome: X3D files of 25' contours; GIS data of water related infrastructure with a timeline overlaid on a map of the modern city; includes a project bibliography; Leonardo Bufalini, Roma Map (Rome, 1551).

GeoData@Tufts: developed and maintained by Tufts University Information Technology, in in collaboration with Harvard; provides an open-source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve geospatial data from multiple repositories. GeoData@Tufts is part of the Open Geoportal.

Geonames: the GeoNames geographical database contains over 10 million geographical names and consists of over 8 million unique features; geonames covers all of Italy and the Mediterranean basin and beyond. The database integrates geographical data such as names of places in various languages, elevation, population and others from various sources and provides lat/long coordinates in WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984).

The Open Geoportal: a consortium comprised of universities and organizations to help facilitate the discovery and acquisition of geospatial data across many organizations and platforms through a single common search interface. Current partners include: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MassGIS, Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Los Angeles, Yale University, and the University of Connecticut.

Pleiades: this NEH-funded Pleiades is a community-built gazetteer and graph of ancient places providing topographical information about ancient places and spaces, via a search mask recognizing both antique and modern settlement names. The project is part of the STOA Consortium and receives the support of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Roman Aqueducts: website dedicated to Roman aqueducts, includes drawings and photographs and an article on the Geology of Rome by Evan J. Dembskey. The sister site, ROMAQ: The Atlas Project of Roman Acqueducts, provides additional information.

Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World (ORBIS): the project aims at reconstructing the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in antiquity; includes numerous maps and resources, among which the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project, which is dedicated to exploring the Forma Urbis Romae, or Severan Marble Plan of Romemap carved in stone from 203 to 211 AD.

If you can't find TCI maps, get whatever is available (Michelin is good, as are the city maps by Streetwise; Rick Steves publishes a helpful planning map), but bolster any bought at home with locally-produced maps picked up once you get over there, as they'll be infinitely more detailed. Don't worry about them being "foreign" publications. A road is a road in any language.

Litografia Artistica Cartografica makes very complete and large foldout city maps with searchable indices. They also publish 1:150,000 province maps that are less detailed than the Edizione Multigraphic sheets, but because of this are easier to glance at while driving.

Note that, even with a map, you are going to get lost in Venice (even Venetians get lost repeatedly if they venture outside their own little section of town). Accept this, and view it as part of the adventure.

There are a ton of free mapping services available online. The better to compare/contrast the results each of the general mapping services will give you, I've pasted below screen shots of the maps each service returned when I did a search of a pretty minor street (Vicolo del Cinque) in Rome, Italy.

Google Maps (maps.google.com) did a stellar job, and even found it though I used a different spelling. It had some of the best close-up detail, including street numbers and some sightseeing info. It also comes with Google's patented StreetView, allowing you to plop a little avatar on any (non-pedestrian) street and take a virtual look around to see what the street looks like (well, what it looked like circa 2007, or whenever the Google van cruised through).

The actual results are below, but before we get to them, do know that there are also country-specific mapping sites out there than can be a real asset. TuttoCitt (www.tuttocitta.it) is the Italian mapping outfit that provides the city maps Italians get with their phone books.

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I have wandered Italy on several occasions, often by train, but have never found a printed map of the complete rail system. I want to spend a few weeks just wandering by rail and a printed map would be a great help. They exist "online" but are too small and incomplete to be of much help. Does anyone know where I might get such an animal?

The Trenitalia publication, called "In Treno", which shows the map (schematic) and the timetables (table by table), can be seen here:

-ferroviario

In this page there are several hyperlinks that you can click to download everything, maps and timetables, in PDF format.

If you go to Italy, maybe they still publish the paper version as they used to do when I worked at the Florence SMN station (that was nearly 35 years ago so I'm not sure they still do it nowadays). If they do sell a paper version of the "In Treno" publication, check at the newsstand inside the station or ask the information desk. In the old days there was another similar publication called "Pozzorario", not even sure it exists anymore.

I appreciate the links, but the maps are not complete. For whatever reason Trenitalia seems to just want to show only their lines. For instance, on the Umbria map, it does not show the line which runs from Terni to Perugia via Todi. I have ridden that line to Todi both ways, so I know it is there. In the absence of a "complete" map, there are lines that probably exist, but which are not shown. Very frustrating when you just want to wander by the seat of your pants, choosing the next destination on a whim.

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