La rappresentazione delle Mura Aureliane nell’Ottocento: vedutisti, eruditi, topografi, architetti, militari

Abstract

The nineteenth century was, for the city walls of Rome, a period of major material and immaterial transformations which
can be explored further by analysing the representations of the walls themselves.
This article investigates the way in which landscape painters, scholars, topographers, architects and soldiers perceived the
walls through the images they produced, and how this perception had an impact on their conservation. The walls were the
only imperial building that, until 1870, retained its original function, but they were already mainly depicted as a ruin. The
itinerary unfolds between 1821, when the perspective views of Sir William Gell were published, to the publication of Forma
Urbis Romae by Rodolfo Lanciani (1893-1901), which became the basis for subsequent representations of the city, definitively
conditioning the perception and representation of ancient Rome.