Google Rome

It's now possible to explore Old Rome without air (or time) travel, according to The New York Times. Ancient Rome 3D, a new feature of Google Earth, is a digital elaboration of some 7,000 buildings recreating Rome circa A.D. 320, at the height of Constantine's empire, when more than a million inhabitants lived within the city's Aurelian walls.

If multimedia ancient Rome is your passion, there's an innovative geo-database that references the work of two 18th century masters of Roman topography: Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756), who published the first accurate map of Rome (La Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748); and his contemporary Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782), whose comprehensive documentation of the city and its monuments, especially in Delle Magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna, published from 1747-1761, establishes him as one of Rome’s great topographers. An interactive 1748 map of Rome, based on the map by Nolli, is a dynamic, hands-on tool that allows users to layer the map with such details as city gates, fountains, and gardens, while Vasi's Grand Tour of Rome presents over two hundred and forty of Vasi's topographic prints in relationship to Nolli’s map.