Mirabilia Urbis Romae

Mirabilia Urbis Romae (“Marvels of the City of Rome”) is a grouping of hundreds of manuscripts, incunabula, and books in Latin and modern European languages that describe notable built works and historic monuments in the city of Rome. Most of these texts were intended as guidebooks to the city for pilgrims and visitors. Before the fourteenth century, however, the core text seems instead to have served as a census of the built patrimony of the city, the decus Urbis. This inheritance represented the strength of Rome and the power of the institutions that controlled it.

The first compilation in the Mirabilia tradition, produced in the early 1140s, is credited to a canon of St. Peter’s Basilica named Benedict.