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[The] extended tour [is] guided by renowned “virtual archaeologist” and overseer of the Rome Reborn project Dr. Bernard Frischer...in dialogue with Dr. Steven Zucker, whose...questions ensure that, while we take in the spectacle of Rome’s impressive architecture (to say nothing of its equally impressive aqueducts) as it looked back in 320, we also think about what the real flesh-and-blood people who once lived there actually did there... — Open Culture
Architectural historian Diane Favro of [UCLA], has employed advanced modeling software to reconstruct the city of Rome in its entirety over the period of the rule of Augustus Caesar, from 44 B.C. to A.D. 14. According to legend, Augustus boasted, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble”... She found that only a small proportion of the buildings in Augustan Rome were converted from brick to marble, and that they would have been difficult to see from ground level. — archaeology.org
Favro explains that while much of Rome was left untouched by Augustus' urban project, the traffic caused by bringing the large quantities of Carrera marble through the city likely created the illusion "that Rome had been transformed into marble." View full entry