This website offers virtual access to a premier collection of historic depictions amassed by Rodolfo Lanciani (1845–1929). Archaeologist, professor of topography, and secretary of the Archaeological Commission, Lanciani was a pioneer in the systematic, modern study of the city of Rome. Beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century and continuing into the first three decades of the twentieth century, his work profoundly influenced our understanding of the ancient city. Throughout his long career Lanciani collected a vast archive of his own notes and manuscripts, as well as works by others including rare prints and original drawings by artists and architects stretching back to the sixteenth century. After his death in 1929, his entire library was purchased by the Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte (INASA), on the recommendation of the Director Corrado Ricci (1858-1934).

The Cantor Arts Center collection of ancient coins, circa 5th century BCE - 15th century CE

This collection consists of approximately 8,600 coins acquired from the 1970s on by the Cantor Arts Center and transferred to Stanford University Libraries in 2017. The original gifts to the Cantor Arts Center came from multiple sources. The coins that have been cataloged are primarily from gifts to the Cantor from Timothy Hopkins; there are also coins from Frank Kovacs, Hazel Hansen, and Henry Clay & Fredrica Lindgren. The primary focus in Stanford Libraries is on the use of coins for classes held in Special Collections' classrooms.

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World reconstructs the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in antiquity. The model is based on a simplified version of the giant network of cities, roads, rivers and sea lanes that framed movement across the Roman Empire. It broadly reflects conditions around 200 CE but also covers a few sites and roads created in late antiquity.

Stanford Libraries, Department of Special Collections, currently houses three collections of papyri: M1421, Papyrus fragments (papyrology collection), circa 200 BC - 200 AD - donated to Stanford in the 1950s; M1809, The Classics Department Papyri Collection - acquired by the Stanford Classics Department in the 1980s; M1967, Papyrus fragments, circa 250-150 B.C. - donated to Stanford in 2013 by David A. Jordan

This project has grown out of a book by the same name: South Africa, Greece, Rome: classical confrontations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). The aim of both is to bring together instances of South Africa's engagements with ancient Greece and Rome. With the current database we hope to expand the scope of the collection, and to make it possible to add further contributions in the future.

This site is dedicated to exploring the Forma Urbis Romae, or Severan Marble Plan of Rome. This enormous map, measuring ca. 18.10 x 13 meters (ca. 60 x 43 feet), was carved between 203-211 CE and covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in Rome. It depicted the groundplan of every architectural feature in the ancient city, from large public monuments to small shops, rooms, and even staircases.

An additional online exhibit for this project can be found at https://exhibits.stanford.edu/fur

An archeologist by training, Ernest Nash (1898-1974) began taking pictures of Roman buildings and monuments the moment he arrived in Rome in 1936. He set out to visually record remains in Rome and in other archeological sites, including Pompeii, Ostia, and Herculaneum; in doing so, he created a photographic corpus which is still widely regarded as an important visual resource for the study of ancient monuments. A selection of Nash’s most important pictures was later used in the publication of a two-volume topographic survey of Ancient Rome. His Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, published in 1962, provides an invaluable album of the ancient city. Even today, its striking images and robust bibliography remain relevant for classicists, urbanists, archeologists, historians and architects.