Città romane della Cisalpina (original) (raw)

The archaeological and topographical data presented on the occasion of the exhibition "Roma e le genti del Po" have allowed a new methodological approach to the studies on the grid plan of Roman towns. In fact, even in ancient settlements that might appear regular, special attention has to be paid to their real urban plan, even if there seems to be no evidence of non-rectilinear alignments, differences in measurements of contiguous blocks, and apparently unexplained deviations of the streets. This encourages to review the "official" schemes of ancient city plans as used so far. On the other hand, we know that already in ancient times geometric regularity in buildings and cities was not always adopted, especially if there were impediments such as those, for example, mentioned by Hyginus Gromaticus towards the beginning of the 2nd century AD, "si loci natura permittit, rationem servare debemus: sin autem, proximum rationi". This paper will therefore try to provide an explanation for some town plans that, despite their being labelled as orthogonal, are irregular, taking into account the earlier underlying phases that have conditioned the shape of the city since the foundation of the colonies by the Romans. In this way, the identification of plans of archaeological remains related to the Celtic, Venetian, Umbrian populations allows us to understand irregularities that would otherwise be implausible in a "geometric" urban grid. Important cities such as Mediolanum,