page_title: Castra
section_title: Streets, gates and central plaza
hierarchical_section_title: Castra / Plan of forts / Streets, gates and central plaza
caption_attribution_description: English: Porta Savoia a Susa (TO) con a sinistra la facciata della cattedrale di San Giusto
context_page_description: In the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, the Latin word castrum was a building, or plot of land, used as a fortified military camp. In English, the terms Roman fort, Roman camp and Roman fortress are commonly used for castrum. However, scholastic convention tends toward the use of the words fort, camp, marching camp and fortress as a translation of castrum.
  Castrum was the term used for different sizes of camps including a large legionary fortress, smaller forts for Cohorts or Auxiliaries, temporary encampments, and "marching" forts. The diminutive form castellum was used for fortlets, typically occupied by a detachment of a cohort or a century.
context_section_description: Every camp included "main street", which ran through the camp in a north-south direction and was very wide. The names of streets in many cities formerly occupied by the Romans suggest that the street was called cardo or cardus maximus. This name applies more to cities than it does to ancient camps.
  Typically "main street" was the via principalis. The central portion was used as a parade ground and headquarters area. The "headquarters" building was called the praetorium because it housed the praetor or base commander ("first officer"), and his staff. In the camp of a full legion he held the rank of consul or proconsul but officers of lesser ranks might command.
  On one side of the praetorium was the quaestorium, the building of the quaestor (supply officer). On the other side was the forum, a small duplicate of an urban forum, where public business could be conducted. Along the Via Principalis were the homes or tents of the several tribunes in front of the barracks of the units they commanded.
  The Via Principalis went through the vallum in the Porta Principalis Dextra ("right principal gate") and Porta Principalis Sinistra ("left, etc."), which were gates fortified with turres ("towers"). Which was on the north and which on the south depends on whether the praetorium faced east or west, which remains unknown.
  The central region of the Via Principalis with the buildings for the command staff was called the Principia (plural of principium). It was actually a square, as across this at right angles to the Via Principalis was the Via Praetoria, so called because the praetorium interrupted it. The Via Principalis and the Via Praetoria offered another division of the camp into four quarters.
  Across the central plaza (principia) to the east or west was the main gate, the Porta Praetoria. Marching through it and down "headquarters street" a unit ended up in formation in front of the headquarters. The standards of the legion were located on display there, very much like the flag of modern camps.
  On the other side of the praetorium the Via Praetoria continued to the wall, where it went through the Porta Decumana. In theory this was the back gate. Supplies were supposed to come in through it and so it was also called, descriptively, the Porta Quaestoria. The term Decumana, "of the 10th", came from the arranging of manipuli or turmae from the first to the 10th, such that the 10th was near the intervallum on that side. The Via Praetoria on that side might take the name Via Decumana or the entire Via Praetoria be replaced with Decumanus Maximus.
caption: Porta called Savoia, Susa, Piedmont, 275-290 BC.
exif: {}