However Rome had at that time a population of about 700 000 people, and there are not enough buildings represented here — the artists probably depicted only the “nice” buildings and forgot the slums and shanty-towns that hosted a great part of the population.
Some number-crunching to help with that: the screen claims “25 km2 ”, of which roughly one half is covered in buildings. This makes a population density of 56 k people/km2. That number is incredibly high: the densest city in the world, Manila, reaches only 41k people/km2 , and for all that ancient Rome was certainly crowded, Manila also has skyscrapers (Roman insulas were limited to 20m high), slums, and obviously not as many huge public monuments.
![image showing Full virtual reconstruction of Imperial Rome [2105x1421] (x-post /r/papertowns)](418d521d-24df-53af-8390-98da65670b60.jpg)
Stregato on August 4th, 2017 at 12:19 UTC »
Interesting, but I'm curious to know something about gameplay.
Crisis_Averted on August 4th, 2017 at 12:50 UTC »
Woah, I just realized at some point there will be Google Earth History, where you can zoom in to any part of the world at any point in time.
CubicZircon on August 4th, 2017 at 13:04 UTC »
We can date this quite precisely, because it features the baths of Diocletian (completed in 306) and not those of Constantine (315).
However Rome had at that time a population of about 700 000 people, and there are not enough buildings represented here — the artists probably depicted only the “nice” buildings and forgot the slums and shanty-towns that hosted a great part of the population.
Some number-crunching to help with that: the screen claims “25 km2 ”, of which roughly one half is covered in buildings. This makes a population density of 56 k people/km2. That number is incredibly high: the densest city in the world, Manila, reaches only 41k people/km2 , and for all that ancient Rome was certainly crowded, Manila also has skyscrapers (Roman insulas were limited to 20m high), slums, and obviously not as many huge public monuments.