Resources

Here I place links which are primarily about Roman culture, history, art, literature, etc., rather than the Latin language. But there will obviously be considerable overlap. See also my Basic tools for classical surfing page; I do not routinely repeat "megasites" with wide coverage of the ancient world here.

General Sites

RomanSites is a superb, if somewhat slow-loading, set of links to Roman sites (like it says), complete with detailed reviews of the major sites. It is part of a massive collection of materials on Ancient Rome put together by Bill Thayer, called LacusCurtius. LacusCurtius is well worthing surfing on its own right, especially for its large collection of dated, but classic (and useful) secondary sources.

VRoma is a site with two main parts, one of them a virtual community, i.e., "an on-line 'place,' a multi-user networked environment (MOO/web server) built upon a spatial and cultural metaphor of ancient Rome, where faculty and students can meet in real time, interact, collaborate, hold classes, and access databases, texts, images and teaching materials." If you're not sure what that means, they offer a guide. The other part is a more conventional (and very extensive) collection of resources, including a large collection of images. For example, one of the organizers of VRoma, Professor Barbara MacManus, has put together a swell website for the course she teaches on Ancient Rome in Film, Fiction, and Fact. With sound text, nice images, and many links.

Forum Romanum is a very impressive site, including a huge collection of Latin texts and much more. All put together by an enterprising high school student (now Harvard University undergraduate: so that's how you get in!).

Rome

From Bill Thayer: Lacus Curtius on Rome and links to sites on Rome.

A neat clickable introduction to the Roman Forum by three Dutch students.

The official Italian government site of the Roman fora. Some of the more nifty features take a while to load but may well be worth the wait. English as well as Italian.

The Christian catacombs of Rome. An official church site with images and various church documents on the catacombs.

A page on Ostia, this from the commercial In Italy Online site, with a brief introduction to the highlights, well-illustrated with photos of the current remains and links to reconstructions.

Pompeii

Pompeii forum project. A nifty guide to the forum of Pompeii with a clickable site plan.

The architecture of Pompeii. Numerous images, including some on building techniques.

Pompeian plumbing. From a site on the history of plumbing. That's right.

If you found the last one interesting, there is a new novel, Pompeii, by Robert Harris, about a Roman in charge of the Pompeian waterworks who does some detective work right before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Here's a positive review from the New York Times.

Alia

Horace's villa. Archaeologists believe they have found the country estate given to the Roman poet Horace by his patron Augustus. This fine site includes a quick tour and information about the current excavations at the site.

Tourism

In Italy Online, a nice, if commercial and sometime slow, guide to the various charms of Italy. I've linked its Ostia page above; see also the guide to Ancient Italy.

Here's the Lonely Planet guide to Italy.

The official city of Rome site, tourism division. I direct you to the English version.