Travellers had for centuries wandered through the heart of ancient Rome through first a study of prints and paintings and subsequently through films, and since the early decades of the twentieth century local guides, in order to make the monuments in their current physical guise intelligible, had equipped themselves with more or less elaborate and refined graphic and pictorial reconstructions of the Forum as it was, and of the salient episodes of its history. Room was left for the imagination, the principal eras were privileged, and in the resulting manipulation the information was inevitably simplified.
The challenge of this traditional guide, with respect to new hypermedia technologies that can produce astonishing virtual or augmented reality, is the presentation of selected itineraries, in a concise narrative integrated with a wealth of up-to-date photographic illustrations, to convey the emotional and symbolic value of one of the most famous places in the world in all its historical and cultural discontinuity.
Italian / english edition. Translation by Gavin Williams for Scriptum, Rome.
