INSTANCES OF ITALIAN TOWN-PLANS
The preceding chapters have dealt with the origins and general
character of the Italian town-plan. We pass now to the remains which
it has left in its own home, in Italy. These are many. In one city
indeed, the greatest of all, no town-planning can be detected. Like
Athens and Sparta, Rome shows that conservatism which marks so many
capital cities. No part of it, so far as we know, was laid out on a
rectangular or indeed on any plan.[67] It grew as it could. Its
builders, above all its imperial builders, cared much for spectacular
effects and architectural pomp. Even in late Republican times the
gloomy mass of the Tabularium and the temples of the Capitol must have
towered above the Forum in no mere accidental stateliness, and
imperial Rome contained many buildings in many quarters to show that
it was the capital of an Empire. But for town-planning we must go
elsewhere.
[67] The traces of prehistoric planning detected by some writers
in Rome are very dubious.
The sources of our knowledge are twofold. In a few cases
archaeological excavation has laid bare the paving of Roman streets or
the foundation of Roman house-blocks. More often mediaeval and modern
streets seem to follow ancient lines and the ancient town-plan, or a
part of it, survives in use to-day. Such survivals are especially
common in the north of Italy. It is not, indeed, possible to gather a
full list of them. He who would do that needs a longer series of good
town-maps and good local histories than exist at present; he needs,
too, a wider knowledge of mediaeval Italian history and a closer
personal acquaintance with modern Italian towns, than a classical
scholar can attempt. But much can be learnt even from our limited
material.[68]
[68] See the seventeenth century Atlases of Blaeu, Janssons, and
others, the modern maps prepared by Grassellini and others about
1840-50 (some on the scale 1:4,000), and in particular the
_Atlante geografico_ of Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini (Firenze,
1844), and the recent town-maps of various Italian cities (mostly
about 1:10,500). Different maps of the same town sometimes differ
much in their detail. The Italian Government maps of the largest
scale (1:25,000) are small for our present purpose and have been
issued mainly for northern Italy.
The evidence of the streets needs, however, to be checked in every
case. It would be rash to assume a Roman origin for an Italian town
simply because its streets are old and their plan rectangular. There
are many rectangular towns of mediaeval or modern origin. Such is
Terra Nova, near the ancient Gela in Sicily, built by Frederick Stupor
Mundi early in the thirteenth century. Such, too, Livorno, built by
the Medici in the sixteenth century. Such, too, the many little
military colonies of the Italian Republics, dotted over parts of
northern and middle Italy. Often it is easy to prove that, despite
their chess-board plans, these towns do not stand on Roman sites.
Often the inquiry leads into regions remote from the study of ancient
history.
Fortunately, enough examples can be identified as Roman to serve our
purpose. Some of these occur in the Lombardy plain where, both under
the Republic and at the outset of the Empire, many 'coloniae' were
planted full-grown and where town-life on the Roman model was
otherwise developed. Not all these towns survive to-day; not all of
the survivors retain clear traces of their Roman town-plan; in nine
cases, at least, the streets seem unmistakably to follow Roman lines.
Four of the nine date from early days; in the late third and the early
second centuries (218-183 B.C.), Piacenza, Bologna, Parma, and Modena,
were built as new towns with the rank of 'colonia'. The first three of
these were later refounded, about 40-20 B.C.--whether their streets
were then laid out afresh is an open question--and Turin and Brescia
were added. In addition, Verona, Pavia, and Como won municipal status
in or before this later date, though when or how they came to be laid
out symmetrically is not certain.[69] And there are other less certain
examples.
[69] Milan (Mediolanium), once the chief Roman town of north
Italy, is usually stated to preserve to-day no trace of Roman
street-planning. But the line of the Via Manzoni, Via Margherita,
and Via Nerino (cutting the Ambrosian Library) seems really to
represent one of its main streets, and the line of the Fulcorino
and Corso di Porta Romana the other, while one or two traces of
'insulae' can be detected near the Ambrosian Library. The town
was destroyed in A.D. 539 and again in 1162, and more survivals
cannot be expected.
Other instances, but not so many, may be quoted from south of the
Apennines. At Florence, for example, and at Lucca 'coloniae' were
planted full-grown and the street-plans still record the fact. At
Naples, at Herculaneum, perhaps at Sorrento,[70] proofs survive of
similar planning. But the towns of central Italy were in great part
more ancient than the era of precise town-planning, and many of them
were perched in true Italian fashion on lofty crags--_praeruptis
oppida saxis_--which gave no room for square or oblong house-blocks.
In the period of the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewer
'coloniae' were planted here than in the north, while in much of
southern Italy towns have in all ages been comparatively rare.
[70] Beloch, _Campanien_, p. 252.
In the towns just noted we can trace many, though not all, of the
original house-blocks. Usually the blocks are square or nearly so, as
at Turin, Verona, Pavia, Piacenza, Florence, Lucca. Less often they
are long and even narrow rectangles, as at Modena, and Sorrento, and
above all Naples, and as usual it is not easy to understand the reason
for the difference (p. 80).
_Turin_ (fig. 15).
Of all the examples of Roman town-planning known to us in Italy, Turin
is by far the most famous.[71] Here the streets have survived almost
intact, and excavations have confirmed the truth of the survival by
revealing both the ancient road-metalling and the ancient town-walls
and gates. Turin, Augusta Taurinorum, began about 28 B.C. as a
'colonia' planted by Augustus. Its walls enclosed an oblong of about
745 x 695 metres (127 acres).[72] The sides are represented (1) on the
north by the Via Giulio, in the western part of which the southern
edge of the street actually coincides with the line of the Roman
town-wall, while further east the Porta Palatina enshrines an ancient
gate; (2) on the west by the Via della Consolata, and the Via
Siccardi, the east side of which latter street seems to stand upon the
Roman town-wall; and (3) on the south by the Via della Cernaia and Via
Teresa, the north side of which stands over the Roman southern
town-wall. (4) The east wall agrees with no existing street but may be
represented by a line drawn through the Carignano Theatre and the
western front of the Palazzo Madama, which contains the actual towers
of the Roman east gate.[73] The north-west corner, uncovered in 1884,
is a sharp right angle. This feature recurs at Aosta and at Laibach
(pp. 90, 116), both founded, like Turin, in the Augustan age, and
seems to belong to that period; later, it gave place to the rounded
angle visible at Timgad (p. 109) and in many Roman forts of the middle
Empire.
[71] Carlo Promis, _Storia dell' antico Torino_ (Torino, 1869);
Alfredo d'Andrade, _Relazione dell' ufficio regionale per la
conservazione dei monumenti del Piemonte_, 1883-91 (Torino,
1899); Schultze, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, cxviii. 339; Barthel,
_ibid_. cxx. 105; Pianta di Torino (1-10,000), by G.B. Paravia.
[72] I take these figures from the plan of Paravia, which is said
to be the most correct plan of Turin at present available. Promis
gives smaller dimensions, 720 x 670 m., and he measured from what
is now known to be a point too far to the east (the Via Accademia
delle Scienze) instead of from the west front of the Palazzo
Madama; he has, however, been usually followed. Other maps give
other dimensions, Orlandini (1844), 758 x 780 m.; Vallardi
(1869), 680 x 740 m.; Maggi (1876), 730 x 800 m.; Ashby (Art.
'Turin' in _Encycl. Britannica_) gives 2,526 x 2,330 ft. which
must be too large. I reproduce here (fig. 15) the plan of
Orlandini, since it shows well the extent of street-survivals in
Turin before the great modern rebuildings or expansions.
[73] d'Andrade, _Relazione_, pp. 8-20; _Notizie degli Scavi_,
1885, pp. 173, 271, and 1902, p. 277.
Of the interior buildings of the town little is known. The Forum
perhaps stood near the present Palazzo di Città, and the Theatre was
traced in 1899 in the north-east corner of the town, occupying
apparently, a complete insula;[74] of the private houses nothing
definite seems to be recorded.
[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
_decumanus 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 assigned 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 abutted 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 space 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 superstition attaches to it such
as that which led the Chinese not to put their gates opposite
each other (p. 148).
[Illustration: 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, _Antichità 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 Römer_, p. 458.
[Illustration: 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 'analfabeta') 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 17A. FLORENCE, SINCE THE REBUILDING OF THE
CENTRAL PORTION (Centro shaded).]
[Illustration: 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 passage--now an open space--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 space 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. Trinità. 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
'decumanus maximus', so that the larger 'insulae' correspond to those
which appear in the same position at Turin and elsewhere (p. 88).
[Illustration: 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 Tassi (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 passed 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 Shoobridge, _Herculaneum_
(London, 1908), pp. 60 foil.; E.R. Barker, _Buried Herculaneum_
(1908); Gall in Pauly-Wissowa, viii. (1912) 532-48.
[Illustration: 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 pass 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 Titus 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; Capasso, _Napoli
Greco-Romana_ (Napoli, 1905). The Forum, Market, and some other
buildings marked by Capasso 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 città di N._ (Off. della Guerra, 1865), from which latter
fig. 20 is adapted.
[Illustration: 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 space 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 trespassed 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.