W.T.H. is a Nolli map

Giovanni Battista Nolli, "Nuova Topografia di Roma" (12 sheets, total dim. 1760 x 2080 mm), 1748

The 1748 Nolli map of Rome, regarded by scholars and cartographers as one of the most important historical documents of the city, serves to geo-reference a vast body of information to better understand the Eternal City and its key role in shaping Western Civilization. Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756) was an architect and surveyor who lived in Rome and devoted his life to documenting the architectural and urban foundations of the city. The fruit of his labor, La Pianta Grande di Roma ("the great plan of Rome") is one of the most revealing and artistically designed urban plans of all time. The Nolli map is an ichnographic plan map of the city, as opposed to a bird’s eye perspective, which was the dominant cartographic representation style prevalent before his work. Not only was Nolli one of the first people to construct an ichnographic map of Rome, his unique perspective has been copied ever since.

Detail with the Piazza Navona on the left and the Pantheon on the right

The map depicts the city in astonishing detail. Nolli accomplished this by using scientific surveying techniques, careful base drawings, and minutely prepared engravings. The map's graphic representations include a precise architectural scale, as well as a prominent compass rose, which notes both magnetic and astronomical north. The Nolli map is the first accurate map of Rome since antiquity and captures the city at the height of its cultural and artistic achievements. The historic center of Rome has changed little over the last 250 years; therefore, the Nolli map remains one of the best sources for understanding the contemporary city.

The Nolli map reflects Bufalini's map of 1551, with which Nolli readily invited comparison, however Nolli made a number of important innovations. Nolli reoriented the city from east (which was conventional at the time) to magnetic north, reflecting Nolli's reliance on the compass to get a bearing on the city's topography.


How is a Nolli map different than a figure-ground diagram?

Nolli map on the left and contemporary figure-ground diagram of Rome

Though Nolli follows Bufalini in using a figure-ground representation of built space with blocks and building shaded in a dark poché, Nolli represents enclosed public spaces such as the colonnades in St. Peter's Square and the Pantheon as open civic spaces.

A figure-ground diagram is a two-dimensional map of an urban space that shows the relationship between built and unbuilt space. It is akin to but not the same as a Nolli map which denotes public space both within and outside buildings and also akin to a block pattern diagram that records public and private property as simple rectangular blocks. Two of the biggest advocates of its use were Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter (see their canonical book "Collage City", 1978).

In that sense, the white areas of the Nolli map (all the surfaces one can walk) reveal the extension of the public realm into the buildings of the city. Its significance lies in the fact that it is a very immediate communicator of the "permeable" or "porous" ground levels of the city and the more inaccessible ones. Think for example, what would be the difference of a Nolli map along Newbury St. and Downtown Boston? The Midtown on Manhattan and the Downtown area? How can one understand a bit more of the urban fabric he is asked to operate on through such observations?

Sources: The Interactive Nolli Map Website & Wikipedia


Contemporary examples: 

Shen Fei Lam, map from project "A Subdivided Skyscraper", Diploma 9, AA 2010

Lilith van Assen, Lieke van Hooijdonk and Elsbeth Ronner, "The metamorphosis of Coolsingel, or the benign demolition of the City", TU Delft, Netherlands 2010