Integrated geomatic methodologies to reconstruct the ancient topography of Rome
The current urban centre of Rome is built upon up to ten metres of anthropic layers formed between the
Early Bronze Age, when the Capitolium was first occupied, and the present days. These layers represent
an inestimable record of the events (buildings, demolitions, collapses, fires, floods, etc.) that shaped
the appearance of the eternal city. However, most of time the investigations take place near or under
contemporary historical or modern structures, which made the excavations very complex from a technical
point of view. One of the most complex issue become to precisely place in a common tridimensional
framework the structures gradually unearthed, to compare them with the already known (and placed)
ancient features (Bitelli et al., 2017; Radicioni et al., 2017). Along this line of research, starting from 2008,
the Superintendence of Rome is gradually building up a webgis called SITAR (Sistema Informativo
Territoriale Archeologico di Roma) (De Tommasi et al., 2012) to bring together all the archaeological features
of Rome, based on the datum Roma40. The aim of this paper is to present a possible effective workflow to
precisely place the ancient buildings and features using geomatic methodologies. A recent excavation in the
centre of Rome will be used as a case study.