Museum of Roman Civilisation

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Model of Ancient Rome by Italo Gismondi, Museum of Roman Civilisation, EUR, Rome
The Model of Imperial Rome by Italo Gismondi
The Museum of Roman Civilisation (Museo della Civiltà Romana), which lies in EUR, was opened on April 21st 1955. It was built to illustrate all aspects of the civilisation of the ancient Roman world, mostly through its large collection of plaster casts.  

The museum, however, is most famous for its large scaled-model (1:250) of ancient Rome, the work of the Roman architect and archaeologist Italo Gismondi (1887-1974).  The model depicts the city of Rome as it might have looked at the time of the emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306 - 337 CE).

Il Plastico di Roma Imperiale, as the plaster model came to be known, was commissioned in 1933 by Benito Mussolini, in honour of the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Rome's first emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE).

In creating the model, Gismondi relied heavily on Rodolfo Lanciani’s map, the Forma Urbis Romae, which was published in 1901. Lanciani’s map was, itself, based on a massive marble map of the ancient city created under the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193-211). 

Gismondi worked on the model, which measures 55 feet by 55 feet, from 1935 until 1971. 
​The Museum of Roman Civilisation has been closed since 2014, but is due to reopen in June 2026.