Rome and the Colonial City: Rethinking the Grid

According to one narrative that received almost canonical status a century ago with Francis Haverfield, the orthogonal grid was the most important development of ancient town planning, embodying values of civilisation in contrast to barbarism, diffused in particular by hundreds of Roman colonial foundations. Its main legacy to subsequent urban development was the model of the grid city, spread across the New World in new colonial cities. This book explores the shortcomings of that all too colonialist narrative and offers new perspectives. It explores the ideals articulated both by ancient city founders and their modern successors; looks at new evidence for Roman colonial foundations to reassess their aims; and considers the many ways post-Roman urbanism looked back to the Roman model with a constant re-appropriation of the idea of the Roman.
AUTHORS: Sofia Greaves is currently Research Associate at the University of Cambridge after completing her PhD in 2021 as a member of the Impact of the Ancient City project. Her work focuses on classical reception in the nineteenth century, more specifically, how modernists adapted the ancient past as a strategy for renewal. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill OBE FBA, Emeritus Professor and Director of Studies in the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge, formerly Director of the British School at Rome and Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, is Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant project on the Impact of the Ancient City.