At the Intersection of 18th and 21st (Centuries, That Is): A Map of Rome

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Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Three years after wowing Internet audiences with an interactive map of Rome based on the work of an 18th century cartographer, a group that includes three University of Oregon researchers is back with an even more ambitious project.

It builds upon their previous undertaking by adding the illustrations of one of Rome's great cityscape artists, Giuseppe Vasi, to the maps of Giambattista Nolli.

The project, known as Vasi's Grand Tour of Rome, took two years of research and was funded by a $200,000 grant from the Getty Research Institute.

"You don't necessarily have to have a Ph.D. to use the site or be enrolled in the school of architecture," said Jim Tice, the UO architecture professor who led the team of researchers. "We really believe that anyone who has a passion for learning about the city of Rome will be interested."

Tice's collaborators included Erik Steiner from the UO geography department's InfoGraphics Lab and Dennis Beyer, an architecture graduate research fellow. Alan Ceen, a professor of architectural history at Penn State …