The amphitheaters in Roman cities. Urbanistic correspondence during the Augustan age in some Italian contexts, in V. D. Mihajlović, M. A. Janković (eds), Pervading Empire Relationality and Diversity in the Roman Provinces, Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge, 73, 2020, pp. 111-131 (original) (raw)
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Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World
2020
This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the fi rst centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history. The contributions explore how these cities developed landscapes full of civic memory and ritual, saw commercial priorities transforming the urban environment, and began to expand signifi cantly beyond their wall circuits. These interrelated developments not only changed how cities looked and could be experienced, but they also affected the functioning of the urban community and together contributed to keeping increasingly complex urban communities socially cohesive. By focusing on the transformation of urban landscapes in the Late Republican and Imperial periods, the volume adds a new, explicitly historical angle to current debates about urban space in Roman studies. Confronting archaeological and historical approaches, the volume presents developments in Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, thus significantly broadening the geographical scope of the discussion and offering novel theoretical perspectives alongside well- documented, thematic case studies. Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism or Roman history in the Late Republic and early Empire.
2024
Situating Rome within wider debates on Classical Urbanism is notoriously challenging. It cannot be ignored; the city was the point of reference for a civilization built on urban centres. Rome's resilient power to absorb, adapt and represent itself underpinned its longevity. Yet while this rightly ensures Rome has a profound significance in discussions of the Classical and Late Antique city, the pulse that sustained the urbs Roma aeterna was also very much its own. No urban centre in the Mediterranean world could match its sustained dynamism, and as Purcell (2007) observed in his discussion of the horti of peri-urban Rome, the drivers that underpinned its evolution were often particular to the circumstances of the city itself. The European Research Council-funded 'Rome Transformed' Project https://research.ncl.ac.uk/rometrans/ (grant agreement No. 835271, Haynes et al. 2020; 2021; 2022) seeks to understand better this dynamism and its implications, through detailed study of a neighbourhood on the periphery of the Late Republican city, outside Rome's pomerium, which went on to become the centre of western Christendom for a millennium. The project's focus is on the eastern Caelian, and most particularly, on the eight formative centuries that ran from the Principate of Augustus to the Pontificate of Leo III. This paper concentrates on the first four of those centuries. Before proceeding, we would argue that the word 'transformation' needs to be reclaimed. In one of the biggest debates in the study of Classical Urbanism, discussion of the 'end' of ancient cities, the term has become baggage laden. For some, notably Ward-Perkins (2005, 4) it is too neutral to apply to what befell Rome and her empire. While for others, amongst them participants in the European Science Foundation's wide ranging 'Transformation of the Roman World Project' (https://brill.com/display/serial/TRW), it seems the best term to cover a raft of
Fora: refunctionalization of the public space after the end of the Roman city
The paper is the analysis of a number of examples of forensic complex in which, after the end of the roman city (as an entity organized and administratively dependent from a central power) and the next phase of abandonment, happens a reoccupation of the spaces, that previously had been public. The forum of the city, for its innate topographical peculiarities, among which, in primis, the constant characteristic of centrality (which does not always exist from a geometrical point of view, relative to the entire urban plant, but certainly always exists from a functional point of view) and point of passage of large road arteries, is particularly appropriate to become the place where, even after a big traumatic event, can easily be realized a new beginning of human activities, although very different from those carried out during the life of the Roman city. The same condition of “destroyed city” can give life, also in a relatively short time, to a mosaic of activities related to the recovery of material, coming from the destroyed buildings and create a new, also if reduced, urban core. Not only natural disasters can determine the end of a city; the absence of a strong central government, in fact, can determine the abandonment, or a substantial downsizing, of an urban plan, in particular, if it was originally designed for strategic or commercial demands. Even in these cases, the area of the forum, may be altered, such as, for example, the invasion perpetrated by citizens who take possession of space previously of public destination.
Roman Urbanism. Syllabus 2008-9
The study of the Roman city has traditionally focussed on urban topography and the study of major public buildings. This course seeks to understand how and why cities develop and change, their physical and economic fabric, their historical and cultural context, and their place in Roman self-definition.
This paper is a historical outline of the practice of reuse in Rome between the 4th and 13th century AD. It comments on the relevance of the Arch of Constantine and the Basilica Lateranensis in creating a tradition of meanings and ways of the reuse. Moreover, the paper focuses on the government's attitude towards the preservation of ancient edifices in the monumental center of Rome in the first half of the 5th century AD, although it has been established that the reuse of public edifices only became a normal practice starting in 6th century Rome. Between the 6th and 8th century the city was transformed into settlements connected to the principal groups of ruins. Then, with the Carolingian Age, the city achieved a new unity and several new, large-scale churches were created. These construction projects required systematic spoliation of existing marble. The city enlarged even more rapidly in the Romanesque period with the construction of a large basilica for which marble had to be sought in the periphery of the ancient city. At that time there existed a highly developed organization for spoliating and reworking ancient marble: the Cosmatesque Workshop.
Conference: Urban life and the built environment in the Roman world - Leiden, 7-9 December 2016
This conference builds upon recent and ongoing discourse in the study of Roman urbanism to explore the relation between architecture and society in the Roman world. While recent decades have seen spectacular developments in the theories and concepts that inform the study of Roman urbanism, not all spheres of urban life have profited equally, a lot of discourse has gravitated around a limited number of showcase sites (particularly Pompeii and Ostia), and there have been relatively few attempts to draw links with the world beyond Central Italy. This conference focuses on four spheres of activities—religion, politics, commerce, and movement—and brings together specialists focusing on several parts of the Roman world, with a particular focus on the more densely urbanized regions in the Mediterranean. Approaches will vary between micro-scale and more wide-ranging, and issues on the agenda particularly include the identification of regional trends, and the impact of urban development on local communities. Confirmed speakers include Touatia Amraoui, Marlis Arnhold, Eleanor Betts, Chris Dickenson, Elizabeth Fentress, Miko Flohr, Annette Haug, Patric-Alexander Kreuz, Simon Malmberg, Stephan Mols, Eric Moormann, Cristina Murer, Candace Rice, Amy Russell, Saskia Stevens, Christina Williamson, Andrew Wilson, and Sandra Zanella. A detailed program can be found below the break. PROGRAMME Wednesday 7 December Gravensteen (Pieterskerkhof 6), Room 1.11 I. Urban life between theory and practice Chair: Eric Moormann, Radboud University 14:15 – 14:45 Introduction: Urbanism, urban space, and urban life (Miko Flohr, Leiden University) 14:45 – 15:30 Multisensory approaches to Roman urban space (Eleanor Betts, Open University (UK)) 16:00 – 16:45 Emotion and the City: the example of Pompeii (Annette Haug, University of Kiel) 16:45 – 17:30 Rome – the Moving City: Approaches to the Study of Urban Space (Simon Malmberg, University of Bergen) Thursday 8 December Gravensteen (Pieterskerkhof 6), Room 0.11 II. Urbanism and the sacred Chair: Tesse Stek, Leiden University 10:00 – 10:45 Urbanizing the sacred landscape. Rural sanctuary complexes in Asia Minor (Christina Williamson, Groningen University) 11:15 – 12:00 Religion in the urbs: Defining the special case of Imperial Rome beyond the political centre (Marlis Arnhold, University of Bonn) 12:00 – 12:45 The Economy of the Sacred (Elizabeth Fentress, Rome). III. Landscapes and Citizens Chair: Luuk de Ligt, Leiden University 14:00 – 14:45 Topographical permeability and dynamics of public space in Roman Minturnae (Patric-Alexander Kreuz, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Amman) 14:45 – 15:30 Statues and public life in the cities of Roman Greece: Athens, Corinth and Messene (Chris Dickenson, University of Oxford) 16:00 – 16:45 Political space and the experience of citizenship in Republican Rome: monumentality, interpellation, and performance (Amy Russell, Durham University) 16:45 – 17:30 Female Citizens and Cityscaping in Africa Proconsularis (Cristina Murer, Free University, Berlin) Friday 9 December Gravensteen (Pieterskerkhof 6), Room 0.11 IV. Landscapes of Interaction Chair: Nathalie de Haan, Radboud University Nijmegen 09:30 – 10:15 The urban borderscape as an arena for social, political and cultural interaction (Saskia Stevens, University of Utrecht) 10:15 – 11:00 I risultati delle recenti indagini in una zona suburbana di Pompei. Per una rilettura del dato topografico (Sandra Zanella, Université Montpellier – Labex Archimede) 11:30 – 12:15 Roman roads as indicators of urban life: the case of the Via Appia near Rome (Stephan Mols & Eric Moormann, Radboud University Nijmegen) 12:15 – 13:00 The commercial landscape of Roman ports (Candace Rice, University of Edinburgh) Chair: Tyler Franconi, University of Oxford 14:00 – 14:45 Urban workshops in Roman Africa: location, ownership and management (Touatia Amraoui, Casa de Velázquez, Madrid) 14:45 – 15:30 Fora and commerce in Roman Italy (Miko Flohr, University of Leiden) V. Concluding Remarks & General Discussion Chair: Tyler Franconi, University of Oxford 16:00 – 16:20 Concluding Remarks (Andrew Wilson, University of Oxford) 16:20 – 17:00 General Discussion
The role of'great events' in the urban transformations of Rome
isocarp.net
Rome is characterised by projects, events, episodes, forces, interests, interrelated in time and space, that eventually have conditioned its fate. Starting from these assumptions and from some keys of interpretation (powers, events and planning) the paper shows that "the eternal city" represents an emblematic case, albeit in its evident specificity, of the so-called 'pulsar effect' applied to the urban transformations.
STUDIME SHOQËRORE 7 , 2020
The characteristics of the public and community spaces and, in particular, the types of structures contained in them, can be good indicators for the nature of a certain urban entity. For example, the public area of a civitas stipendiaria in a Roman province is certainly different from that of a colonia or of a municipium. The cities with a privileged status, in fact, played a fundamental role for the whole territory which was part of their jurisdiction and, in these cities, the forum was a celebratory space of particular importance, in which, in the various monumental phases, some specific characters played a role in the construction or renovation of public buildings. In these operations, the euergetism has often guaranteed the financing of numerous public works, which contributed, often in different times, to the achievement of an urban amoenitas. The public monuments of the cities, in fact, were often built with the donations of wealthy citizens. These type of donations were connected with the desire for ostentation of economic power and social prestige and gave to the donors a strong political power at a local level. It will be analyzed, through some significant examples of Roman cities in Italy and in Spain, the relationship between the legal status of the settlement and the “monumentalization” of their public areas.