II. But if Roman streets have seldom survived continuously to modern
days, if Roman town-planning perished with the western Empire, it has
none the less profoundly influenced the towns of mediaeval and modern
Europe and America. Early in the thirteenth century men began to
revive, with certain modifications, the rectangular planning which
Rome had used. Perhaps copying Roman originals seen in northern Italy,
Frederic Stupor Mundi now built on a chess-board pattern the Terra
Nova which he founded in Sicily. Now, in 1231, Barcelonette was built
with twenty square 'insulae' in south-eastern France. Now, too, the
'Bastides' and 'Villes Neuves' of southern France and towns like
Aigues-Mortes (1240) were built on similar plans.[122]
[122] For the Bastides and Villes Neuves see Dr. A.E. Brinckmann,
_Deutsche Bauzeitung_, Jan.-Feb., 1910, and, for an example, fig.
35. Many of them may be earlier than 1200 (A. Giry, _Bibl. de
l'École des Chartes_, xlii. 451), but those with more or less
chess-board plans seem later.
[Illustration: FIG. 35. PLAN OF A BASTIDE TOWN, SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE
NEAR BORDEAUX (A.D. 1281).
(By Dr. A.E. Brinckmann.)]
Soon after, the chess-board pattern came to England and was used in
Edwardian towns like Flint[123] and Winchelsea; then, too, it was
adopted at the other end of the civilized world by German soldiers in
Polish lands. Cracow, for example, owes to German settlers in the
mid-thirteenth century that curious chess-board pattern of its
innermost and oldest streets which so much puzzles the modern
visitor.[124] It is unnecessary here to follow further the renaissance
of town-planning. By intervals and revivals it continued to spread. In
1652 it reached Java, when the Dutch built Batavia. In 1682 it reached
America, when Penn founded Philadelphia. In 1753, when Kandahar was
refounded as a new town on a new site, its Afghan builders laid out a
roughly rectangular city, divided into four quarters meeting at a
central Carfax and divided further into many strangely rectangular
blocks of houses.[125]
[123] Compare E.A. Lewis, _Medieval Boroughs of Snowdonia_, pp.
30, 61 foll.
[124] So, too, Lemberg. Compare R.F. Kaindl, _Die Deutschen in
den Karpathenländern_, i. 178, 293; ii. 304; he does not, however,
deal with the actual plans.
[125] I have to thank the late Sir Alfred Lyall for a sight of a
survey made by English engineers in 1839.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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