Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Roman Empire on Google Maps


Vici.org is a Google Map that lets you find the location of buildings and artefacts from the Roman Empire.

Using the map it is possible to search for Roman remains near a particular location. It is possible to view the data on Google Maps or on top of the Pelagios Roman map tiles (more of which below). It is also possible to view a slide-show of some of the highlights on the map by using the Presentation option.

Vici.org is inspired by Wikipedia. Anyone can add content to the map and all content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution / Share Alike license.


Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum is a route planner that lets you navigate the Roman Empire using the roads and shipping lanes available to the ancient Romans. 

Omnes Viae is based on an ancient Roman map known as the 'Tabula Peutingeriana' and allows you to plan a route that contains all the main roads and cities of the Roman Empire. Routes generated by Omnes Viae list the towns and cites and also the river crossings on your trip in the map sidebar and displays the actual route on a Google Map.


The Pelagios Project has released Roman Empire map tiles that can be used with the Google Maps API. They have released a demo map, Digital Map of the Roman Empire, which shows how the map can be used with the Google Maps API.

The demo is just a basic map which replaces the Google Map tiles with the Roman Empire map tiles. If you want to search the map for ancient world place names then you should check out the Pleiades website. Pleiades is a great resource for anyone interested in the history and geography of the ancient world. The site is a community based and open-sourced gazette of ancient places.

If you search Pleiades for a Roman place name you can view the location on a map. On the displayed map you need to select the 'Imperium' map layer to view the Roman Empire map tiles.

1 comment:

Shai said...

Thank you so much! I have a project for school, and I needed this map!