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.[1] 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.[2]
The first compilation in the Mirabilia tradition, produced in the early 1140s, is credited to a canon of St. Peter’s Basilica named Benedict.[3]