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The Skyline of Rome The Skyline of Rome An archaeological interpretation of high-rises in Rome in the beginning of the Third Century AD By means of the Forma Urbis Romae and archaeological sources. Julius Pilzecker Figure 1: Fragment 10g of the Forma Urbis Romae(http://formaurbis.stanford.edu). The Skyline of Rome An archaeological interpretation of high-rises in Rome in the beginning of the third century AD by means of the Forma Urbis Romae. Author: Julius Pilzecker, S1520202 Bachelor thesis: 1043SCR1Y-17-18ARCH Supervisor: M.K. Termeer Ph.D. Specialisation: Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology University of Leiden, Faculty of Archaeology Leiden, 15-06-2018, Final version 1 2 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 4 1.1 Background ............................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Aim of the thesis ....................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................. 8 1.4. Structure of the research ....................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2 The staircases on the FUR ................................................................................ 12 2.1 A typology of the V-shapes ..................................................................................... 12 2.1.2 H-shapes ........................................................................................................... 20 2.2 The existing interpretations of the V-shaped symbol. ............................................ 22 2.2.1 Ziçans 1941 ....................................................................................................... 22 2.2.3 Pedroni 1992 .................................................................................................... 23 2.2.4 Madeleine 2008 ............................................................................................... 25 2.2.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 26 Chapter 3 The height of Roman buildings ......................................................................... 29 3.1 Comparison with archaeological material .............................................................. 29 3.2 Estimating the height of Roman buildings .............................................................. 31 3.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 34 Chapter 4 The distribution of high-rises within Rome ...................................................... 35 4.1.1 General distribution ......................................................................................... 36 4.2.2 Specific distribution .......................................................................................... 38 4.2.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 41 Chapter 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 42 Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 44 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 45 Internet sources ............................................................................................................ 46 Ancient Sources ............................................................................................................. 46 List of figures ..................................................................................................................... 47 List of tables ...................................................................................................................... 48 List of Appendices ............................................................................................................. 48 Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 50 3 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background Through historical texts and the interpretation of modern historians of these texts the image is created that Rome was a city full of skyscrapers at the peak of the Roman empire (Storey 2003, 3). The height of Roman insulae1 grew proportionally to the strength of the empire, which led to some insulae reaching staggering heights (Carcopino 1940, 24). Skyscrapers were multistoried structures that appeared as mixed- use buildings with shops for the wealthy on the ground floor and housing for the lower- class occupants on the upper floors (Modi 2014, 25). It was a necessity to make buildings higher to house the continuous influx of immigrants, generally poor peasants, from the entire Roman Empire. These immigrants were drawn by the elaborate sprawl of public buildings, which made the city-center a heavily desired place within Rome (Jongman 2003, 100-103). The demand for high buildings greatly benefited the profits of the landlords, but also created a clash between commercial buildings and public architecture on who could build the tallest building. This meant that the skyline of Rome became a competitive place (Tipton 2017, 76). The increases in height caused risk and distribution problems because of how complicated and concentrated the space for urban housing in Rome was. The differences in wealth and height led to problems with blocking the light and view, which were basic rights of Romans (Dig. 19.2.25.2). Juvenal declares that the height of residential buildings created the danger of broken things being thrown out of windows from upper floors (Juv. 3.199). The absence of light and view and the danger of things thrown out of windows, led to the need of restrictions of height of the Roman buildings (Tipton 2017, 76-77). According to Strabo and Tacitus it starts with emperor Augustus, who limited the height of roman buildings to 70 roman feet, which is about 20 meters today (Geography 5.3.7; Annals 15.43). Nero restricted the height even further and lowered it to about 60 roman feet, which is 18 meters. Later, under the rule of Trajan, the height was restricted to about 57 roman feet, which is 17 meters (Storey 2003, 8). These restrictions were however difficult to administer because of the hilly landscape of the city. Therefore, the administrators were unusually quiet regarding the actual height of buildings (Tipton 2017, 76-77). These examples strongly suggest that high-rises were omnipresent in Rome, but these 1 An insula has multiple interpretations, but I will be using it as a term to describe a group of apartment buildings. 4 sources are all historical. Historical sources have the tendency to be biased and can lead to a flawed or incorrect vision, which makes historical sources not always very trustworthy (King 2017, 3). Historical sources offer narratives that archaeology must correct or dispute (King 2017, 7). To achieve this, archaeological sources are needed to refine these historical sources regarding high-rises in Rome. Many of the residential or public buildings of imperial Rome are not visible in the urban landscape of modern day Rome. The few available archaeological resources in our possession make it difficult to evaluate the height of Roman buildings (Madeleine 2008, 293; Packer 1971, 66). There are however some theories that attempted to calculate the height of Roman buildings, as Packer thought it was possible to measure the height through the thickness of the ground floor walls (1971, 195). Hermansen continued this theory and made an argument that a 50 cm thick wall supported two-floor buildings, 60- 65cm supported three floors, 80 cm supported four floors and 90 cm supported five floors (Hermansen 1982, 51). This theory is however panned by Storey who applied this theory on 308 preserved buildings and performed 1273 measurements in Rome, Ostia (Storey 2001, 395-396). The results of Storey’s experiment did not match the expectation, because only 10,8% of the cases where applicable with the theory of Packer. From this experiment can be concluded that there is no predictive relation between the thickness of a wall and the height of a building. Meiggs also arguments that the romans probably could not have measured the strength of their materials. Therefore, they possibly build thicker walls than necessary to be sure that the building would not collapse (Meiggs 1973, 241). Another theory to calculate the height of Roman buildings was to measure the accumulated materials on the ground surrounding a former multifloored building and base the height upon that material and staircases. This is not possible, due to the lack of sufficient preserved and accurate records of these accumulations (El Hadidi 2017, 83; Storey 2001, 396). These theories imply that the height of Roman buildings cannot be measured solely by archaeological sources. So instead, I will mainly be utilizing the Forma Urbis Romae (FUR) as the archaeological visualization of staircases and high-rises. The FUR has been extensively used for research by the scholar community to understand Roman city life, since the discovery of the first fragments in 1562 (Reynolds
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