Conoscere il passato per governare il presente: un confronto tra cartografia storica e moderna per lo studio del centro di Roma

The idea of this paper, develops from the consideration that, since the second half of the XXth century, urban planning of Italian historical centers seems constrained by the fear of compromising the architectures of the past. Rome’s city centre, today UNESCO site, gathers a built up heritage that witness its long and unique existence. The aim of this project is to exploit the geometric precision and descriptive detail, characterizing the “Nuova pianta di Roma”, published in 1748 by Giovanni Battista Nolli, for studying the urban transformations at housing block level. The rigorous georeferencing of the historical cartography, allows for the spatial comparison with actual cartographies and with very high resolution satellite images, and the consequent analysis of the urban structure and its formal and functional contents.