Pictures of Rome - EUR

I spent a month scanning fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, a map of ancient Rome carved into marble slabs, which collapsed and was buried for a thousand years before being discovered buried in the rubble in 1500. Since then, archaelogists have been trying to put the 1300-piece puzzle back together, and we wanted to try computer algorithms to solve the problem. This required, however, that we scan each of the 1300 pieces of the Forma Urbis. So we spent a month in EUR, a suburb built by Mussolini, and intended as the site for a World's Fair that never happened.

(Click on an image to see a larger version. Click on the "++" link to see a huge full-size version.)

++
Our apartment in Rome, in a hotel just a few blocks from the museum.
++
The outside of our hotel building.
++
A view of the street outside our apartment building. As another sign of Italian reliability, one bus is stalled in the street, while another bus approaches.
++
We were working in the Museum of Roman Civilization, built by Mussolini to house replicas of many of the important artifacts of Rome. Unfortunately the museum was falling into disrepair. Soon after our arrival, a brick portion of the ceiling collapsed...
++
...dropping heavy debris on some plaster replicas in storage...
++
...just a few yards from where we were scanning. Needless to say, we tried to avoid standing under the brick part of the ceiling, and they would not allow us to store the fragments under the brick ceiling...
++
...so we stayed, as much as possible, underneath this solid overhang.
++
Our schedule was wildly overambitious, meaning that we were soon scanning with two scanners, 24 hours a day. We usually had 3 people in Rome at a time, which meant that we each worked 16 hour shifts, with 8 hours off to sleep and eat. Here the exhaustion starts to show on Dave's face.
++
Meanwhile, Kari hacks and Sean runs the smaller scanner...
++
...While Maisie aligns scans to the music of her CD player.
++
Just a few of the 1300 "rocks" (map fragments), laid out carefully on bubble wrap, with their identification papers. The crates in the background contain rocks still yet to be scanned.
++
Each rock was placed on one of the two scanners' turntables. Here a fragment is being scanned by our big scanner.
++
Another picture of us at work. On the right you can see our "photograph station", where we took digital photos of each fragment that we scanned.
++
One of the 20+ rooms of the museum above us.
++
Another one of the 20+ rooms of the museum above us.
++
Approaching the front of the museum, it looks monolithic and imposing. We were scanning in the basement, underneath the columns.
++
The museum parking lot was also a make-out point for the youth of Rome, meaning that it was common to see beer bottles and trash left in the morning.
++
Another sign of the deterioration of EUR. Graffiti letters are spraypainted on the back of the columns.
++
When we did occasionally leave the museum in search of food, we found ourselves in downtown EUR, an example of suburbs gone horribly wrong.
++
Despite the urban decay around us, there never seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm to build yet more crowded mediocrity, as evidenced by the multiple cranes dotting the skyline.
++
Common in Rome was the roadside fruit stand, which often sold greasy tourist food like bad pizza and doughnuts.
++
Sunset over Rome.
++
...and a few minutes later.


Lucas Pereira
Back