Urbes et Orbis is an interactive map of the Roman Empire as it stood in AD 130 (year 883 ab Urbe condita) — the year of Antinoopolis's foundation. Built with OpenLayers v8, it visualises 7,891 settlements across the Empire and beyond, each cross-referenced with the major scholarly databases of classical geography.
The project serves two purposes:
- A research gateway that aggregates identifiers from Pleiades, the Barrington Atlas, the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, and 9+ other sources in a single interface.
- A digital cartography showcase demonstrating how modern web GIS can present ancient geography with speed and interactivity.
This is a non-commercial, personal project. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, but it does not claim to be a scholarly publication.
- Interactive map — pan, zoom, and explore the Roman world at its greatest extent under Hadrian.
- Smart search — find any of 7,891 settlements by name with fuzzy matching and instant navigation.
- Rich place details — each settlement shows: ancient/modern names, Roman province, chronological range, coordinates (decimal & DMS), and descriptions from Pleiades.
- Cross-reference hub — every settlement is linked to:
- Pleiades · Barrington Atlas · Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
- ToposText · Trismegistos · Vici.org · Wikidata · Wikipedia
- Harvard's DARMC · Stanford's ORBIS · Oxford's Hanson database
- Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites · Tabula Peutingeriana
- Permalinks — each settlement gets a stable URL (
#id130-slug) for sharing and reference. - Satellite minimap — an Esri World Imagery inset shows the modern terrain for any selected location.
- Data downloads — the full settlement dataset (CSV), ocean basemap (GeoJSON), and provincial boundaries (GeoJSON) are available for offline use.
- Road network — overlaid Roman roads classified by certainty (certain / conjectured / hypothetical) from the Itiner-e project.
| Source | Content | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ancient World Mapping Center (UNC) | Coastlines, provincial boundaries, inland water | BSD-2 |
| Pleiades | Settlement gazetteer & descriptions | CC-BY 3.0 |
| Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire | Settlement locations | consult original |
| Barrington Atlas | Map directory references | consult original |
| Hanson (Oxford) Cities Database | Urban rank classification | academic attribution required |
| Itiner-e | Roman road network | CC-BY 4.0 |
| ToposText | Place references | consult original |
| Trismegistos | Place references | consult original |
| Vici.org | Place references | consult original |
| DARMC (Harvard) | Settlement & period references | consult original |
| ORBIS (Stanford) | Transport network references | consult original |
| Map tiles | Land & Ocean base by MapTiler, hillshade by Esri | see providers for terms |
- Mobile responsiveness — the sidebar and map controls are not yet fully optimised for small screens.
- Road geometry — the road layer contains some geometric inaccuracies inherited from source data; a correction pass is planned.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Map engine | OpenLayers v8 |
| Build tool | Vite |
| Data format | GeoJSON |
| Clipboard | ClipboardJS |
| Styling | Vanilla CSS + Bootstrap 5.3 |
The original code, cartographic layers, and compiled datasets in this repository are released under the 2-Clause BSD License. See LICENSE for details.
External data sources retain their own licenses. See the Data Sources table above and the map's attribution control for detailed attribution. If any copyright has been inadvertently infringed, please contact me to rectify the matter.
- Site: urbesetorbis.com
- Email: admin@urbesetorbis.com
- GitHub: Diasito/urbesetorbis
If you find this project useful for research, teaching, or inspiration — please consider starring the repository. Contributions, corrections, and suggestions are warmly welcome.
Version 2.1 · © 2023–2026 Diasito