Roman City Planning and Spatial Organization

Abstract

The towns founded by the Romans over the course of some eight centuries of history were always inspired by rigid principles of spatial organization, followed by the Roman military camps as well. The symbolism embodied in such rules was tightly and undubitably connected with the power of Rome. According to a variety of ancient sources, city planning involved ritual procedures inherited from the Etruscans and closely connected with the equipartition of the Cosmos according to cardinal directions. As a consequence, a role for astronomy has to be expected in Roman city planning. However, attempts at establishing a common rule have been doomed to failure up to now due both to methodological issues and to the practical mentality of the Romans, which in many cases appears to have overruled symbolic principles. We discuss these issues and present recent results obtained on the towns of Italy and of the Iberian Peninsula, which help to clarify the matter.