Client: Sapienza University of Rome
Location: Rome, Italy
Year: 2015
Sector: Urban Sensing · Lighting · Heritage · Fieldwork
A physically-surveyed, GPS-tagged lux map of the streets and gallery levels around the Colosseum, built by walking a custom light-sensor rig through the site at night.
How evenly — or unevenly — is one of the world’s most visited monuments actually lit at night? Rather than relying on assumptions or existing lighting plans, SPIN Unit measured it directly, on foot, after dark.
Carried out in partnership with Sapienza University of Rome, with access to the Colosseum’s official architectural plans (all four orders plus the hypogeum) suggesting institutional/heritage-authority cooperation. Field data collection ran April–September 2015.
A wheeled cart carrying a lux meter, GPS, and a synchronized video telemetry overlay was walked around the Colosseum’s exterior and interior levels at night, logging light intensity and colour temperature continuously along multiple survey passes. The point data was merged in QGIS and smoothed via kernel density estimation (tested at eleven different bandwidths) into a continuous lighting-intensity surface, styled as a glowing heat-ring from 4 to 180 lux.
An iterative cartographic process — from raw point-blob drafts on daytime basemaps to a refined, styled night heat-map — culminating in a high-resolution composited aerial visual suitable for large-format print or exhibition.
- Measured lighting intensity ranges from roughly 4 lux at the darkest points to 180 lux at the brightest — a 45x variation around the monument’s perimeter.
- The brightest illumination clusters on the east/southeast side, near the metro station and commercial area; the darkest stretches are on the west side, near Arco di Costantino / Via di San Gregorio.
- The survey combined both exterior and interior/gallery passes, using official architectural plans of all four orders and the hypogeum — not just a street-level study.
- Eleven different kernel-density bandwidths were tested before settling on the final smoothing parameter — a methodically careful approach to turning point data into a continuous surface.
Produced a distinctive, exhibition-quality visualisation of one of the world’s most recognisable monuments, and an early demonstration of SPIN Unit’s custom field-sensing approach applied to heritage/tourism contexts rather than only transport or housing.