The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired the following item:
Leonardo Bufalini/ Giovanni Battista Nolli. Urbis Romae ichnographia…. Nuremberg, Homann Erben, 1755. Four joined sheets, each hand colored.
Leonardo Bufalini produced the earliest ichnographic map, or ground plan, of Rome in 1551. The first effort since antiquity to represent the city in a detailed plan, Bufalini’s monumental work shows Rome as a combination of ancient ruins and contemporary development. Giovanni Battista Nolli expanded upon Bufalini’s plan in 1748 in his extraordinary Nuova Pianta di Roma, also recently acquired by Hesburgh Libraries.
This fine, hand-colored engraving of Bufalini’s plan as modified by Nolli was printed in 1755 in Nuremberg. A wonderful resource for the study of urban cartography, this plan is quite rare; the University of Notre Dame joins Harvard University and the University of Chicago as the only holders of this item in the United States.
