Roma antica e l'ideale di città (con qualche esempio dalla storia coloniale repubblicana)

Ancient Rome was not an ideal city, as it was confined within a small circle of walls and a net- work of winding roads, overcrowded, confused, mephitic and drastically reduced by fires. But this does not mean that, in the Roman civilization, during Republican and Imperial age, an ideal city was missing or people did not know how to make it real. On the contrary the ‘perfect’ urban model existed in the eyes of the Romans and it is still vi- sible today, wherever ruins of Roman or Latin colonies are found. The criterias followed by the Romans were those of ‘order’ and ‘functionality’. This is shown by a series of examples: Ostia, Co- sa, Piacenza, Vercelli