1900 Bulla Pictorial Tourist Map of Rome, Italy

This is a scarce c. 1900 Romolo Bulla indexed pictorial bird's eye view of Rome, Italy. Oriented towards the west-southwest, it depicts Rome from the Aventine Hill to the Piazza del Popolo and the Villa Borghese, and from the Vatican to the Termini train station.

A Closer Look

Profile illustrations of most of the major monuments in Rome appear throughout, including the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Temple of Vesta, and the Vatican, among others. All place names and street names are in Italian. An alphabetical street index appears just outside the border corresponding to a grid bordering the map, while indices at left give the location of famous lungoteveri, waterfront promenades along the Tiber, and for the quartiere Testaccio, an industrial area that mostly extended beyond the scope of this map.

A key at top-right explains the color coding used on the map, for ancient structures, hotels and inns, churches, fountains, theaters, cultivated land, buildings used for manufacturing, and planned construction, as well as dashed lines for tramways and red dashed lines to mark out Rome's wards (rioni).

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Romolo Bulla c. 1900. Bulla published several editions of this map, all undated but most of which can be distinguished by the development of Rome's tramway system. We note some fifteen institutions holding any edition or state of this map. The present example is atypical in that it has been dissected and laid on linen for durability and foldability.