Comic Book Artist Recreates Ancient Rome

10-14-2004, 07:22 PM

Comic Book Artist
Recreates Ancient Rome
By Angela Doland
Associated Press Writer
10-13-4

ROME -- Imagine ancient Rome before its fall: The some 1,350
fountains still trickle with water, the 1,790 palaces haven't fallen
to ruins and the 240 public latrines are still in business.

In painstaking detail, French comic book artist Gilles Chaillet has
brought the ancient city back to life with an immense map based on a
lifetime of research and a touch of artistic license.

Chaillet dreamed up the project when he was 9 years old. Nearly 50
years later, he came to the Eternal City to show it off to the
Romans.

"This was an idea I could never get out of my head," Chaillet told
The Associated Press on Thursday. "It was a bit of an obsession."

There are no definitive surviving maps of ancient Rome, which was
most of the challenge, he said.

Chaillet's immense map is colored in with cheerful greens, russets
and pearly tones by his wife, Chantal. Looking at it, you can
imagine a day's stroll in Rome circa 314 A.D.: a leisurely morning
at the bathhouses, a stop at the market to buy some chickpeas and
trip to the Circus Maximus to take in a chariot race.

When Chaillet was a child in Paris, he discovered the ruins of Rome
through a postcard and comic books. Inspiration struck.

"I announced to my parents, 'I want to re-create ancient Rome,'" he
said. "They said, 'calm down and go do your math homework.'"

At one point, Chaillet's father was so frustrated by his son's lack
of attention to his schoolwork that he set fire to some early Rome
sketches.

Chaillet, now 58, made other Rome maps at age 13 and at 20, during
his military service. After high school, he became a successful
comic book artist in a country where everyone from kindergartners to
executives read them.

In his downtime, Chaillet visited archives, libraries and museums to
research his side project.

He set his map in 314 A.D. because the majestic and well-preserved
Arch of Constantine wasn't built until around then, and he felt most
Rome-lovers couldn't imagine the city without it.

At that time, Rome had about 1 million inhabitants and was ruled by
Constantine I, who legalized Christianity.

When Chaillet finally sat down to sketch the 11 foot-by-6.5 foot
map, he spent 5,000 hours at the drawing board. His wife spent
another 3,000 hours coloring it in.

Chaillet thinks that about 5 percent of the map's 13,000 buildings
are completely accurate. About 30 percent are fairly accurate, and
the rest is based on educated guesses, he said.

The map has been displayed in museums around France, and in April
Chaillet published a 200-page French-language book to accompany the
project, "Inside the Rome of the Cesars."

Now, his sketches and a smaller copy of the map are on display at
the French cultural center in the city that inspired his dreams.

"It's the end of a long quest" - and probably the end of his career
as a mapmaker, Chaillet said.

"There are other cities I also love, like Venice and my hometown,
Paris," he said. "But there's not the same emotion there. ... I'd
need a second life to do a second city."

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