TERRAIN VAGUE: THE TIBER RIVER VALLEY Beatrice Bruscoli
[email protected] Figure 1: Bridge on Via del Foro Italico looking downstream Rome, the Eternal City, continues to be Rome—to really begin to know the an active model and exemplary location city—we must walk through it, taking to study and understand the dynamic our time. Arriving at a gate in the transformations taking place in contem- Aurelian Wall, we cross the threshold porary landscapes. In the process of and enter the Campagna (countryside) becoming “eternal,” Rome has been that surrounds Rome just as it has for continually—often radically—altered, millenea. while conserving its primordial image; Looking through the multitude of renewing itself over time, without losing images, paintings, and plans of Rome, its deeply rooted structure. we cannot help but notice that its Before urban form, forma urbis, primary characteristics have remained there is natural form. As Christian distinct and constant over the centuries. Norberg-Schultz informs us, the genius Gianbattista Nolli’s “La Pianta Grande loci of Rome does not reside in some di Roma” of 1748 is the city’s most abstract geometric order or a formalized well-known representation.2 (Plan 1) architectural space, but in the close and This remarkable figure-ground map continuous ties between buildings, voids, presents us with a view of Rome; of a and the natural landscape.1 Rome’s dense compact area of inhabitation, forma urbis was generated and shaped dotted with piazzas and courtyards, and by the natural morphology of its land- surrounded with vast unbuilt areas all scape.