Ancient Town-Planning Part 6

[74] _Notizie_, 1903, p. 3.

But the street-plan has survived intact, except in two outlying corners. The town was divided up into square or nearly square blocks, of which there were nine counting from east to west and eight from north to south. Most of these 'insulae' measured about 80 yds.

square.[75] A few were larger, 80 x 120 yds.; these were ranged along the north side of the street now called Via Garibaldi (formerly Dora Grossa), which represents the Roman main street between the east and west gates--in the language of the Roman land-surveyors, the _dec.u.ma.n.u.s maximus_. This street cut the town into two equal halves.

The other divisions of the town were no less symmetrical. But, as there were nine 'insulae' from east to west, the main north and south street could not bisect the town. Indeed, the south gate seems to have had five house-blocks west of it and four east of it, while the Porta Palatina stands further west, with six blocks on the west side of it.

The north and south gates, therefore, are not opposite.[76] Whether this was the original plan is not clear, nor is the age of the surviving walls and gates quite certain; the bonding courses in some of the masonry of the walls does not seem Augustan. But the street plan may unhesitatingly be a.s.signed to the first establishment of the town, about 28 B.C. Since, it has been extended far beyond the Roman walls. Nearly all modern Turin has been laid out, bit by bit, in imitation and continuation of the original Roman lines.

[75] An insula is mentioned in _Notizie_, 1901, p. 391, which measured 74 x 80 metres. It is likely that there were small unevennesses in the ancient as there are in the modern house-blocks. The 'insulae' which ab.u.t.ted on the town-walls are represented to-day by unduly large blocks, oblong rather than square, but these latter contain not only the areas of the Roman 'insulae' in question, but also the s.p.a.ce between them and the town-walls and the lines of the wall themselves (p. 77).

[76] This failure in symmetry recurs in one or two other Roman towns as probably at Timgad (p. 109) and at Cologne (E. and W.

gates), at Silchester and Caerwent, but it may sometimes be the result of alteration. Occasionally it appears in military sites (Ritterling, _Lager bei Hofheim_, p. 29 _note_). It is presumably a mere matter of convenience; no superst.i.tion attaches to it such as that which led the Chinese not to put their gates opposite each other (p. 148).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15. TURIN. FROM A PLAN OF 1844]

_Aosta_ (fig. 16).

Another example of an Italian town-plan, from the same date and district as Turin, is supplied by Augusta Praetoria, now Aosta, some fifty miles north of Turin in the Dora Baltea Valley, not far from the foot of Mont Blanc.[77] Aosta was founded by Augustus in 25 B.C. on a hitherto empty spot, to provide homes for time-expired soldiers and to serve as a quasi-fortress in an important Alpine valley. Its first inhabitants were 3,000 men discharged from the Praetorian Guard, with their wives and children; its population may have numbered at the outset some 15,000 free persons, besides slaves. The town, as it is known to us from excavation and observation, formed a rectangle 620 yds. long and 780 yds. wide, and covered an area of about 100 acres (fig. 16). The walls formed sharp right angles at the corners, as at Turin. Within the walls were an amphitheatre, a theatre, public baths, a structure covering nearly 2 acres and interpreted as a granary or (perhaps more correctly) as a cistern,[78] and private houses as yet unexplored. Beneath the chief streets were sewers, by which indeed these streets were mainly traced.

[77] C. Promis, _Antichita di Aosta_ (Torino, 1862), with plan, plate 3, dating from 1838; _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1899, p. 108, with a later plan, but lacking a scale; Nissen, _Ital.

Landeskunde_, ii. 171.

[78] Durm _Baukunst der Romer_, p. 458.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16. AOSTA]

The whole was divided by a regular network of streets into rectangular blocks. According to the latest plan of the site, there were sixteen blocks, nearly identical in shape and averaging 145 x 180 yds. (5-1/2 acres). That, however, is an incredible area for single house-blocks, and it is to be noted that Promis shows two further roads (A, A in fig. 16). If these are survivals of other such roads, Aosta may have contained thirty-two oblong 'insulae', each nearly 220 x 540 ft., or even sixty-four smaller and squarer 'insulae', measuring half that size.[79] Four gates gave entrance; those in the two longer sides which face north-west and south-east, are curiously far from the centre and indeed close to the south-western end of the town. It is, of course, impossible to determine, without spade-work, which of the recognizable buildings of Aosta date from the foundation of the place in 25 B.C. But the general internal scheme and the symmetrical and practically 'chess-board' pattern of streets must date from the first foundation.[80]

[79] Promis, p. 140; his plan has no proper scale. There seems no decisive evidence and the modern streets of Aosta do not help us.

[80] The town of Concordia in north-east Italy, where Augustus planted a 'colonia', doubtless of discharged soldiers, is said to have possessed a ground-plan of oblong blocks very like that of Augusta Praetoria. But this plan rests mainly on the authority of a workman who apparently did not know how to read or write (he is described as 'a.n.a.lfabeta') and I therefore omit it here. See _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1880, p. 412, and Plate XII (the text gives no dimensions and the plan lacks a scale), and compare 1882, p. 426, and 1894, p. 399.

_Florence_ (fig. 17).

A yet more interesting instance of a Roman town-plan preserved in many streets may be found in Florence.[81] In Roman times Florence was a 'colonia'. When this 'colonia' was planted is very doubtful. Perhaps the age of Sulla (90-80 B.C.) is the likeliest date; all that is actually certain is that the foundation was made before the end of the first century A.D. This 'colonia', like others, was laid out in chess-board fashion, and vestiges of its streets survive in the Centro which forms the heart of the present town. The Centro of Florence, as we see it to-day, is very modern. It was, indeed, laid out a generation ago by Italian architects who designed the broad streets crossing at right angles which form its characteristic. But this 'Haussmannization' revived, consciously or unconsciously, an old arrangement. The plan of Florence in 1427 shows a group of twenty unmistakable 'insulae', each of them about 1-1/8 acre in area, that is, very similar in size to the 'insulae' of Turin. This group is bounded by the modern streets Tornabuoni on the west, Porta Rossa on the south, Calzaioli on the east, Teatina on the north; it covers a rectangle of some 305 x 327 yds., not quite 21 acres.

[81] On Roman and early mediaeval Florence see Villani, _Cronica_ (written about 1345, published 1845), i. 61, 89, 120; R.

Davidsohn, _Geschichte von Florenz_ and _Forschungen_ (Berlin, 1886); L.A. Milani, _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1887, p. 129; plan of the Centro in 1427 by Comm. Guido Carocci, _Studi storici sul Centro di Firenze_ (Florence, 1889); _Monumenti antichi_, vi. 15.

Nissen _(Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 296) fixes its area at 400 x 600 m., about 58 acres.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17A. FLORENCE, SINCE THE REBUILDING OF THE CENTRAL PORTION (Centro shaded).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17B. FLORENCE ABOUT 1795, FROM L. BARDI.

The chief streets which seem to have preserved Roman lines are marked in black.]

The original Roman town presumably extended beyond these narrow limits. But it is not easy to fix its area, nor are unmistakable 'insulae' to be detected outside them. On the west the Via Tornabuoni seems to have marked the Roman limit, as it does to-day. On the north, a probable line is given by the gateway, Por Episcopi, which once spanned the pa.s.sage--now an open s.p.a.ce--on the east side of the Archbishop's Palace (plan 17 B). That gateway stood between the Via Teatina and the next street to the north, the Via dei Cerretani, and the Roman north wall and ditch apparently ran along the intervals between these two modern streets--as indeed the lines of certain mediaeval lanes suggest. On the east the 'colonia' is supposed to have stretched to the Via del Proconsolo and the old Por S. Piero, probably the original east gate. Here the traces of 'insulae' are ill preserved; the s.p.a.ce in question would contain, and the mediaeval streets would admit of, twelve blocks in addition to the twenty noted above.

The southern limit of Roman Florence towards the Arno is altogether doubtful. There are, or were, traces of Roman baths in the Via delle Terme, and it has been thought that the town stretched riverwards as far as the old gate Por S. Maria and the Piazza S. Trinita. The gate, however, is ill-placed and the line of wall implied by this theory is irregular. The mediaeval streets point rather to a south wall near the Via Porta Rossa. The baths might perhaps be due to a later Roman extension, such as we shall meet at Timgad (p. 113). The Por S. Maria may even be due to one of the reconstructions of Florence in the Middle Ages. At the end we must admit that without further evidence the limits of Roman Florence cannot be fixed for certain. But the limits indicated above give the not unsuitable dimensions of 46 acres (380 x 590 yds.), while the history of the twenty indubitable insulae of the Centro remains full of interest. We see here, as clearly as anywhere in the Roman world, how the regular Roman plan has gradually been distorted by encroachments and how, even in its irregularity, it has had power to drive modern builders towards its ancient fashion.

Of the interior of the Roman town little is known. The streets now called Strozzi and Speziali plainly preserve the Roman main street from east to west, while the Via Calimara overlies that which ran from north to south. Where these crossed was the mediaeval Mercato Vecchio, now enlarged into a patriotic Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele; here we may put the Roman forum, and here too, by the former church of S. Maria in Campidoglio, was the temple of Capitoline Juppiter. There were also theatres, a shrine of Isis, and, outside the Roman limit, an amphitheatre still discernible in the curves of certain streets (plan 17 B). However small Florentia was, it possessed the true elements of the Roman town.

_Lucca_ (fig. 18).

A good parallel to Florence may be found at Lucca, the ancient Luca, where again the streets preserve a rectangular pattern without showing clearly what was its full extent. Luca is said to have been founded as a 'colonia' in 177 B.C., but the statement is of doubtful truth.

Certainly it was a 'municipium' in Cicero's days, and a little later, in the period 40-20 B.C., it received the rank of 'colonia' and many colonists, taken (as an inscription says) from discharged soldiers of Legions VII and XXVI. Whether the surviving traces of town-planning date from this latter event or from some earlier age is not easy to say. But of the street-plan there can be no doubt, though its original size is uncertain. A rectangular area about 700 yds. from east to west and 360 yds. from north to south is divided into fifteen square or squarish 'insulae' arranged in three rows. Each insula is about 3 acres, but those of the middle row are larger than the rest (150 x 150 yds.). The Via S. Croce which runs along the south side of this row was perhaps the main east and west thoroughfare of the town, the 'dec.u.ma.n.u.s maximus', so that the larger 'insulae' correspond to those which appear in the same position at Turin and elsewhere (p. 88).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18. LUCCA.

(The streets which preserve Roman lines are marked in black.)]

Whether there were other 'insulae' besides the fifteen is doubtful. On the east there were certainly none: the two narrow parallel streets at the east end of the area just described are obviously due to a growth of houses along the line of the original east wall. The other limits are more obscure. Probably the north and west walls stood a little outside of the Via Galli Ta.s.si (once S. Pellegrino) and the Via S.

Giorgio, but there may well have been a row of insulae, now obliterated, south of the Via del Battistero. One or two interior buildings are known. The Forum appears to have stood where is now the Piazza S. Michele in Foro; close by was a temple; in the north-eastern quarter, at the Piazza del Carmine, was probably the theatre; near it but outside the walls was the amphitheatre, its outlines still visible in the Piazza del Mercato (110 x 80 yds. in greatest dimensions).[82]

[82] Plan by P. Sinibaldi, 1843, 1:4,000. _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1906, p. 117, &c. Nissen (_Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 288) gives the area as 800 x 1,200 metres, which seems much too large.

_Herculaneum_ (fig. 19).

To these examples from north Italy may be added two from the south, Herculaneum and Naples. Herculaneum had much the same early history as its more important neighbour Pompeii. First an Oscan settlement, then Etruscan, then Samnite, it pa.s.sed later under Roman rule. After the Social Wars (89 B.C.) it appears as a 'municipium'; of its history from that date till its destruction (A.D. 79) we know next to nothing.

But excavations, commenced in the eighteenth century and now long suspended, have thrown light on its ground-plan.[83] This was a rectangular pattern of oblong house-blocks, measuring 54 x 89 yds., or in some cases a little more, and divided by streets varying from 15 to 30 ft. in width which ran at right angles or parallel to one another.

Only a part of the town has been as yet unearthed. In that a broad colonnaded main street ran from north-west to south-east; on the north-east side of this street stood a row of house-blocks with a structure taken to be a Basilica, and on the south-west of it were ten house-blocks, one of which includes some public baths. At the north end of this area are a theatre and temple, at the south end two large structures which have been called temples but are more like large private houses; on the east (according to the eighteenth-century searchers) are graves.

[83] M. Ruggiero, _Scavi di Ercolano_ (Naples, 1885), plates ii and xii; Beloch. _Campanien_, pp. 215 foll.; Nissen, _Ital.

Landeskunde_, ii. 759; Waldstein and s...o...b..idge, _Herculaneum_ (London, 1908), pp. 60 foil.; E.R. Barker, _Buried Herculaneum_ (1908); Gall in Pauly-Wissowa, viii. (1912) 532-48.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19. HERCULANEUM]

How much of the town has been uncovered, how much still lies hidden beneath the lava which overflowed it in A.D. 79, is disputed. Of its town-walls and gates no trace has yet been found. But nearly all its public buildings seem to be known; the graves on the east side, if correctly mapped by their discoverers and if coeval with the streets and houses, leave no room for further 'insulae' in that direction, while the great country-house called the 'Casa dei Papiri' plainly stood outside the town on the north-west. From these facts one modern writer has calculated that Herculaneum was less than a quarter of a mile long, less than 350 yds. broad, and less than 26 acres in extent--in short, not a sixth part of Pompeii. These measures are probably too small. The 'Basilica' on the north side of the main street cannot have stood on the extreme edge of the town. There must have been not three but four rows of house-blocks from south-west to north-east; the graves once noted in this quarter must be older than our Herculaneum or otherwise unconnected with it. The whole town must have been 40 or 45 rather than 25 acres in area. Even so it is a little town. The unenthusiastic references to it in ancient literature are, after all, truthful. Apart from the great villa outside it--possibly an imperial residence--it hardly deserved, or to-day deserves, to be excavated at the extraordinary cost which its excavation would involve.

The date of its planning is as doubtful as the extent of its area. One recent writer, Nissen, has suggested that it was reconstructed after an earthquake in A.D. 63 and was hardly completed before the eruption of 79. The earthquake is well attested. But it cannot possibly have wrecked the town so utterly as to cause wholesale rebuilding on new lines, and an inscription points rather to the time of Augustus. One Marcus Nonius Balbus (the text runs) built 'a basilica, gates and a wall at his own cost', and this builder Balbus was probably a contemporary of Augustus.[84] Others have preferred to think that the town-planning reveals Greek influences; they point to the Greek city of Naples, 7 miles west of Herculaneum, and the Doric temple at Pompeii, much the same distance east of it. However, neither the town-planning of Naples, to be discussed in the next paragraphs, nor that of Pompeii (p. 68), seems to be necessarily Greek, and Herculaneum itself contains nothing which cannot be explained as Italian. It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that it received a settlement of discharged soldiers somewhere about 30 B.C. and was then laid out afresh. But here, as throughout this inquiry, more light is needed if the inquirer is to pa.s.s from guesswork to proven fact.

[84] _CIL_. x. 1425; compare Dessau, 896. It is, no doubt, possible that this Nonius Balbus is the M. Nonius ... who built something in honour of t.i.tus in A.D. 72, but the identification is not likely.

_Naples_ (fig. 20).

One more example, from the neighbourhood of Herculaneum, may complete the list of Italian street-plans. Naples, the Greek and Roman Neapolis, was a Greek city, the most prosperous of the Greek towns in Campania.[85] After 90 B.C. it appears to have become a Roman 'municipium'. But it retained much of its Greek civilization. A writer of the early first century after Christ, Strabo, states that abundant traces of Greek life survived there, 'gymnasia, and athletic schools, and tribal divisions, and Greek names even for Roman things.' Even later Tacitus calls it a 'Greek city', and Greek was still used for official inscriptions there in the third century.

[85] Beloch, _Campanien_ (Berlin, 1879), p. 26; Capa.s.so, _Napoli Greco-Romana_ (Napoli, 1905). The Forum, Market, and some other buildings marked by Capa.s.so seem to me (and even to him or his editors) very dubious (p. 63). Two theatres (p. 82) and a Temple of the Dioscuri are better established. For plans see _Piante topogr. dei quartieri di Napoli_ 1861-5 (1:3,888) and _Pianta della citta di N._ (Off. della Guerra, 1865), from which latter fig. 20 is adapted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20. NAPLES. ADAPTED FROM A PLAN OF 1865.

(TH = Theatre, T = Temple.)]

This Neapolis town had, as certain existing streets declare, a peculiar form of town-planning. The area covered by these streets is an irregular s.p.a.ce of 250 acres in the heart of the modern city, about 850 yds. from north to south and 1,000 yds. from east to west.[86] In Roman days three straight streets ran parallel from east to west and a large number of smaller streets, twenty or so, ran at right angles to them from north to south. The house-blocks enclosed by these streets were all of similar size and shape, a thin oblong of 35 x 180 metres (39 x 198 yds.). Some of the public buildings naturally trespa.s.sed on to more than one 'insula'; a theatre appears indeed to have stretched over parts of three. In general, the oblongs seem to have been laid out with great regularity and the angles are right angles, though the 'insulae' in the northern and southern rows of house-blocks cannot have been fully rectangular and symmetrical.

[86] The limits are the Castel Capuano on the east, the Strada dell' Orticello on the north, the church of S. Pietro a Majella on the west, and on the south the churches of S. Marcellino and S. Severino.

This town-plan of Naples differs from any of those noted above. Its blocks are narrower than those in any Italian town, unless in Modena, and while they resemble the 'insulae' of the sixth region of Pompeii (fig. 13), are far more regular than those. Almost the only close parallel is that of Roman Carthage (fig. 24). As Naples was by origin and character a Greek city, these narrow oblongs have been supposed to represent a Greek arrangement. They do not, however, correspond to anything that is known in the Greek lands, either of the Macedonian or of any earlier period. The conclusion is difficult to avoid that this Greek city of Naples adopted an Italian street-scheme, but laid it out with more scientific regularity than the early Italians themselves.

When this occurred and why, is wholly unknown. That the result is not an unpractical form of building is shown by the fact that similar long and narrow house-blocks are a characteristic feature of modern Liverpool, though they seldom occur in other English towns, unless intermixed with square and other blocks.