Documenting the vanished Alessandrino district of Rome

The historical-formative processes of urban evolution include events that alter the urban structure, leaving gaps and discontinuities. Such events include natural disasters and war, but they may also be planned actions, as in the case of the Alessandrino district in Rome, which was completely removed in the 1930s to reveal the ruins of the Imperial Fora. The research reported in the current paper documents this moment of Rome’s urban history. The aim is to reconstruct the Alessandrino quarter as it was lived just prior to the 20th century demolitions. The method requires initial painstaking research of the historical-archival documentation, with computerised acquisition of the sources. These are organized in a database that will be inserted in an online web-GIS. A second, analytical stage concerns the identification of the architectural and urban character of the built fabric. The third stage provides the synthesis: the recomposition of the streetscapes and their virtual visualization through 3D modelling of the past structures and states. The results obtained through these methods allow visualization of the vanished urban fabric and testify to its architectural-historical meanings.