Ancient Rome Goes Online with Google Earth

Obviously, there were no satellites to snap pictures of Rome two millennia ago. But that hasn’t stopped experts from giving Web surfers a bird’s eye view of the ancient city. Google Earth has added to its software a 3-D simulation that painstakingly reconstructs nearly 7,000 buildings of ancient Rome, including the Colosseum, the Forum and the Circus Maximus. The program, which gives users access to maps and global satellite imagery, now hosts a new layer that allows surfers to see how Rome might have looked in AD 320, a bustling city of about 1 million people under Emperor Constantine