Back in time
The Roman Empire
Open the map in 117 CE, when the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, then play back to the Republic or forward to the fall of the West.
Open the live mapWhat you see
- Rome’s borders and its neighbours’ in any year.
- Its wars and battles as they began.
- Click the empire for its Wikipedia article.
Where the data comes from
- Seshat CliopatriaWorld borders year by year, from 3400 BCE to 2024.
- Event recordsCorrelates of War, UCDP, the Global Terrorism Database, NOAA hazards, SIPRI’s nuclear tests, UNESCO and Wikidata, among others.
Historical records are imported once and change rarely; they are updated when their sources publish new editions.
Good to know
- Borders this far back are scholarly reconstructions, often with wide margins.
- The live layers pause while History is open.
Goes well with
The Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire on an interactive historical map, from its rise around 1300 to its end in 1922, with its borders at the siege of Vienna in 1683.
The world through historyAn interactive historical atlas: the world’s borders year by year from 3400 BCE, with wars, battles and other events from 7500 BCE, on a 3D globe.
The world in 1914The world in 1914 on an interactive map: the empires and borders on the eve of the First World War, then the war’s battles as they happened.