Build Rome in a Day

Where to set up

 

You will need to identify a site on which to lay out the city and make sure that the location will be available all day long.  You will need an area of at least 20 feet by 14 feet.  If you can move all of the desks out of the way and you have enough space, you can use your classroom, but do the measurements to make sure.

 

If you will be setting up outside of your classroom and there is a site requisition process that you must go through, be sure to follow the proper procedures to secure the site.  (I have used an outdoor site and have always had to remember to tell the maintenance crew not to run the sprinklers the night before so that the ground would be dry.)

 

It is also nice to arrange to display the monuments for a week or two after the class builds Rome, even if the city is not set up according to the map.  Perhaps you can set them up in your classroom, in school offices, or the school library for a while.

 

 

Arranging the models

 

Use the “Layout of the Rome Model Map" to help you lay out the city on the day the students bring in their models.  Have the students help you out by asking them to familiarize themselves with the map and see which buildings are next to theirs and then look on the “Monuments Assignments Chart” to see who constructed those monuments.  Start with the monuments in the Roman Forum and begin putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle, beginning with the Temple of Juno Moneta (number 1 on the map) and then arranging them from left to right all the way over to the Colosseum.  From there you can add the Imperial Fora, which angle off from the axis of the Roman Forum.  Once the central section is complete, add the monuments around the edges.

 

If you want to speed up the process of assembling the city and have the time (or a teaching assistant), you can create a large-scale map of the city on which students can simply place their models.  You can buy two large plastic drop cloths (I have found one that measures 10 ft. x 20 ft.) and draw a large grid on them, enlarging the one on the “Layout of the Rome Model Map" by a ratio of 1:24, just as the students will enlarge the grids on their individual blueprints.  Thus the boxes on your large grid should be 24 in. (2 ft.) by 24 in. (2 ft.).  Draw the footprint of each building and label it clearly so the students will know where to place their monuments.  Your finished map will measure 20 ft. x 14 ft.

 

Once you have made this large map on plastic sheeting, all you have to do is lay out the drop cloths on the day the students bring in their models and have them place their projects on the clearly labeled footprint for their project.  If you look carefully at the picture on the homepage of this website, you can see the tarp, especially where Trajan’s Market is a little out of place and you can see the footprint drawn on the plastic.  The photo was taken before we removed the tarp.