One more example, from the neighbourhood of Herculaneum, may complete
the list of Italian street-plans. Naples, the Greek and Roman
Neapolis, was a Greek city, the most prosperous of the Greek towns in
Campania.[85] After 90 B.C. it appears to have become a Roman
'municipium'. But it retained much of its Greek civilization. A writer
of the early first century after Christ, Strabo, states that abundant
traces of Greek life survived there, 'gymnasia, and athletic schools,
and tribal divisions, and Greek names even for Roman things.' Even
later Tacitus calls it a 'Greek city', and Greek was still used for
official inscriptions there in the third century.
[85] Beloch, _Campanien_ (Berlin, 1879), p. 26; Capasso, _Napoli
Greco-Romana_ (Napoli, 1905). The Forum, Market, and some other
buildings marked by Capasso seem to me (and even to him or his
editors) very dubious (p. 63). Two theatres (p. 82) and a Temple
of the Dioscuri are better established. For plans see _Piante
topogr. dei quartieri di Napoli_ 1861-5 (1:3,888) and _Pianta
della città di N._ (Off. della Guerra, 1865), from which latter
fig. 20 is adapted.
[Illustration: FIG. 20. NAPLES. ADAPTED FROM A PLAN OF 1865.
(TH = Theatre, T = Temple.)]
This Neapolis town had, as certain existing streets declare, a
peculiar form of town-planning. The area covered by these streets is
an irregular space of 250 acres in the heart of the modern city, about
850 yds. from north to south and 1,000 yds. from east to west.[86] In
Roman days three straight streets ran parallel from east to west and a
large number of smaller streets, twenty or so, ran at right angles to
them from north to south. The house-blocks enclosed by these streets
were all of similar size and shape, a thin oblong of 35 x 180 metres
(39 x 198 yds.). Some of the public buildings naturally trespassed on
to more than one 'insula'; a theatre appears indeed to have stretched
over parts of three. In general, the oblongs seem to have been laid
out with great regularity and the angles are right angles, though the
'insulae' in the northern and southern rows of house-blocks cannot
have been fully rectangular and symmetrical.
[86] The limits are the Castel Capuano on the east, the Strada
dell' Orticello on the north, the church of S. Pietro a Majella
on the west, and on the south the churches of S. Marcellino and
S. Severino.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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