Roman city planning and spatial organization

The towns founded by the Romans along 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, the 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.