Rome

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Design History

The Roman Empire’s 250,000 Miles of Roadways Imagined as a Subway Transit Map

University of Chicago sophomore Sasha Trubetskoy spent a few weeks designing this amazing subway-style transit map of all the roads in the Roman Empire circa 125 AD. As Kottke notes, Rome constructed 250,000 miles of roads starting in 300 BC—over 50,000 miles of which were paved with stone—linking a total of 113 provinces from Spain to modern day Britain to the northern tip of Africa.

Trubetskoy pulled data from numerous sources, but took liberties where the history is fuzzy. “The biggest creative element was choosing which roads and cities to include, and which to exclude,” he shares. “There is no way I could include every Roman road, these are only the main ones. I tried to include cities with larger populations, or cities that were provincial capitals around the 2nd century.”

You can see the map in a bit more detail on his website, and if you donate a few bucks he’ll send you a hi-res PDF fit for printing. (via Kottke)

Art

Blu’s Massive New Mural in Rome Turns 48 Windows into Faces

Italian street artist Blu (previously) just wrapped up work on this giant mural that wraps around two sides of a building in Rome. The piece utilizes nearly 50 windows to create the mouths and eyes of some 27 bizarre faces all vying for attention. You can see some more views of the piece on his blog and explore it in detail on Google Street View. See it up close here.

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Art

The Classical Street Art of Borondo

Borondo is an artist out of Spain whose work is loosely based in classical painting techniques, a somewhat uncommon sight in the world of street art. His lage-scale paintings of human figures appear unfinished and camouflaged causing a double take as you squint to see the full detail of each work. Borondo’s first solo show in Italy opens this saturday at 999Gallery in Rome. (via vandalog)