page_title: Cosa
section_title: City walls and gates
hierarchical_section_title: Cosa / City walls and gates
caption_attribution_description: Cosa, Ansedonia, Orbetello, Toscana, Italia
context_page_description: Cosa was a Latin colony founded in southwestern Tuscany in 273 BC, on land confiscated from the Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port.
  The Etruscan site may have been where modern Orbetello stands; a fortification wall in polygonal masonry at Orbetello's lagoon may be in phase with the walls of Cosa. The position of Cosa is distinct, rising some 113 metres above sea level and is sited 140 km northwest of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast, on a hill near the small town of Ansedonia. The town experienced a hard life and was never truly a prosperous Roman city, although it has assumed a position of prominence in Roman archaeology owing to the circumstances of its excavation. After the foundation, wars of the 3rd century BC affected the town. New colonists arrived in 197 BC. Cosa seems to have prospered until it was sacked in the 60s BC, perhaps by pirates - although an earthquake and unrest related to the Catilinarian Conspiracy have also been cited as reasons. This led to a re-foundation under Augustus and then life continued until the 3rd century.
context_section_description: The city wall of Cosa was built at the time of the foundation of the colony on 273 BCE. Itis 1500m long and built in polygonal masonry of Lugli's third type. It included a system of interval towers, numbering eighteen in all. These are found at irregular intervals, and all but one are rectangular in plan - the exception is round.  There are three gates which correspond to as many roads:  the northwest, or Florentine gate, which corresponds to the modern entrance to the site, the northeast, or Roman gate, and the southeast, or maritime gate. These each have the same structure, twin gate, one in line with the walls and one to the inside, with a space between them.  The arx also had an independent circuit wall.At the western corner of this was a postern, closed in the early Byzantine period, when the hill was refortified with a wall built with an emplecton.  A final, medieval, circuit in mortared rubble masonry runs along the same line. 
  In recent years the Archaeological Soprintendenza of Tuscany has conducted extensive documentation, repairs and reconstructions of the walls.
caption: Detail of Cosa's polygonal masonry circuit wall
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