Everyone knows ancient Rome. This map reveals the modern city

When people think of Rome, they picture the Colosseum, the Imperial Fora and Baroque domes. Far less often do they think of EUR’s Rationalist architecture, Luigi Moretti’s residential buildings or the major infrastructures that accompanied the capital’s expansion throughout the twentieth century. Yet there is also a modernist Rome: a city of planned districts, housing complexes, bridges, stations and public buildings. Often overshadowed by the city’s ancient heritage, this lesser-known urban landscape is essential to understanding how Rome became a contemporary metropolis.

That story is told in Modern Rome Map / Mappa di Roma Moderna, the new bilingual guide published by Blue Crow Media, the independent publisher renowned for its architecture maps of cities around the world. Edited by architect Jacopo Costanzo and illustrated with photographs by Stefano Perego, the map features more than fifty examples of twentieth-century architecture across Rome and its outskirts.

The premise behind the project is straightforward: while Rome is almost always interpreted through its classical and ancient heritage, the twentieth century produced an equally significant architectural chapter, one that reshaped the city far beyond the boundaries of its historic centre. The selection spans Rationalism, Modernism and Brutalism, encompassing religious buildings, housing developments, infrastructure projects and civic monuments.

Among the best-known works featured is Adalberto Libera’s Palazzo dei Congressi, designed for the planned 1942 Universal Exposition and later becoming one of the defining landmarks of EUR, where the geometric clarity of Rationalism meets the monumentality of the Roman tradition. Also included is Luigi Moretti’s Palazzina Girasole, a masterpiece of post-war residential architecture whose asymmetrical façade remains striking today, as well as the Palazzetto dello Sport by Pier Luigi Nervi and Annibale Vitellozzi, built for the 1960 Olympic Games and still regarded as one of the most successful syntheses of structural innovation and spatial quality.

The map also highlights lesser-known works, from Carlo Aymonino’s social housing projects to buildings by the Passarelli family, alongside international contributions scattered across the city, including Kay Fisker’s Danish Academy on the Janiculum Hill and Basil Spence’s British Embassy near Porta Pia.

The guide is not limited to buildings. It also includes infrastructures and technical facilities such as the Morandi Bridge, the EUR Water Centre in Vigna Murata and Garbatella metro station, demonstrating how Rome’s modern identity was shaped not only by architecture but also by networks of mobility, public services and large-scale engineering projects. It is an approach that broadens the very definition of architecture, embracing the urban machines that helped mould the contemporary capital.

More than a simple guide, Modern Rome Map offers a portrait of a city that repeatedly reinvented itself throughout the twentieth century, producing a diverse architectural landscape where historical memory, experimentation and radically different urban visions coexist. It is an invitation to see Rome from a less familiar perspective, beyond the monuments that made it famous.