URBES ET ORBIS

The Roman Empire under Emperor Hadrian

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URBES ET ORBIS

Hadrian on a coin

The Roman Empire
under Emperor Hadrian

A digital catalog of Roman settlements with cross-references

This map depicts the Roman Empire in the year 883 ab Urbe condita (AD 130). There are 7,891 settlements represented here both within the borders of the empire and beyond. All settlements shown on the map are linked to two definitive reference works on ancient geography: the Barrington Atlas and the Pleiades project.

Click on any city to get more detailed information about it. Use the search field at the top left to find specific settlements.

Download the complete datasets from the DATA tab. Visit the ABOUT tab to learn about the sources and methodology behind this project.

rank1 ROMA Rome and the four principal provincial capitals
rank2 Corduba other provincial and client kingdom capitals
rank4 Ctesiphon
rank3 Byzantium cities categorized by Hanson's urban ranks: 1, 2, 3, 4-5
rank5 Mantinea
rank6 Antinoopolis
rank7 Delos
rank8 Pityous minor settlements and villages
rank9 Wheathampstead sites whose ancient names remain unidentified.
certain roads by itiner-e.org
conjectured roads
hypothetical roads
Click on any city to get more detailed information about it.
ID: | Link:
Alt name(s):
Roman province:
Start date:
Modern place:
Description (Pleiades):
Open this place in:||
Decimal:
DMS:
Barrington Atlas:
Ancient World Mapping Center (UNC-Chapel Hill):
Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (Harvard):
Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (University of Gothenburg):
Orbis (Stanford):
Pleiades:
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites:
Tabula Peutingeriana (Cambridge):
ToposText:
Trismegistos:
Urban Geography of the Roman World (Hanson 2016, Oxford):
Vici.org:
Wikidata:
Wikipedia:en:

Download the complete datasets used in this project in open formats:

All data is released under the 2-Clause BSD License. Attribution is required for reuse.

This project has two primary objectives. First, to present an interactive map of the Roman Empire as it existed at the end of AD 130—coinciding with the foundation of Antinoopolis—using modern web technologies. Second, to create a unified reference point that connects disparate scholarly databases of ancient Roman settlements by aggregating their identifiers and cross-references in a single, accessible location.

The project is built with OpenLayers v8 and utilizes multiple GeoJSON layers. The base map, including coastlines and provincial boundaries, is derived primarily from the Ancient World Mapping Center. Numerous geometric errors in the original data were corrected, and several provincial borders were adjusted to align with relevant geographic features. Every settlement is linked to the Pleiades gazetteer and, with few exceptions, to both the Barrington Atlas and the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire.

The road network depicted on the map is based on data from Itiner-e: the digital atlas of ancient roads. It classifies routes by their level of archaeological and historical certainty (certain, conjectured, and hypothetical).

Data on urban ranks is derived from Hanson, J. W. (2016). Cities Database (OXREP databases). Version 1.0. Used with academic attribution. Please consult the original source for terms of reuse.

If any copyright has been inadvertently infringed or attribution improperly given, please accept my apologies for the oversight and contact me to rectify the matter.

This is a non-commercial project developed as a personal endeavor. While it does not claim to be a scholarly work, every effort has been made to ensure accuracy. I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions regarding both the content and the technical implementation. Feedback may be sent to my email.

Version 2.0. © 2023–2026 Diasito.

Code, data, and cartographic materials are licensed under the 2-Clause BSD License.