ROME IN THE LONG ELEVENTH CENTURY. FROM BUILDINGS EVIDENCE TO AN URBAN PROGRAM.
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-02-26

Aim of this paper is to show some of the results of the research that is being conducted on Medieval Rome, which allowed us to outline how the eleventh century is a crucial moment in the transformation of the city. Starting from the assumption that material culture is the complex of manifestations of people life read through its technical and socio-economic expressions and that architecture and urban planning are an integral part of the material culture, what has been gathered in this research has shown how from the second half of the XI century it is possible to identify the passage in some buildings activities and urbanistic transformation from the early medieval city to the one that will become the twelfth century Rome, not through a long and slow transformation but according to a large urban project implemented right now in this chronological moment. A comparative study of what was built in city with all the buildings works for the deviation of the river Marana and what happened at street and roads in the same period, is the basis for a new hypothesis about what happen in Rome between the end of Eleventh century and the beginning of the Twelfth century: an important urban project that take care on infrastructures and involved all the city. The interrelation between all the data highlights how all the traces analyzed can be traced back to what is very similar to an ”urban program” that starts in the long eleventh century, based on a different way of conceiving space and urban elements, as in other European cities; This urban program represents the background of the transition to that city that appears ”other” than the early medieval city and which will be the basis of the great transformations of Rome in the following centuries.


Author(s): Giannini, Nicoletta (Università Roma Tor Vergata)