ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Reece: Roman towns and their plans
— compared with a Roman fort — chaotic. We have to
move to north Italy, to Verona, Pavia, or Piacenza, to see a
regular grid plan in the oldest parts of the cities. I must
emphasize here that such judgements are made from
careful comparisons of modern town plans rather than
from good archaeological surveys, since the latter are
generally lacking. Two-dimensional street plans have the
failing that they usually omit contours, but in the cases
quoted these seem unlikely to invalidate the points made.
The-medieval town, apart from these small pockets of
possible continuity, shows a complete contrast to the
Roman grid pattern. It might be hoped that as the Roman
town was centred on its civil administrative buildings so
the medieval town might be centred on its cathedral; but
this is a forlorn hope. The dedicated plan searcher might
cite Le Puy in central France, but the topographer will
remind him that the cathedral stands on a hillside so that
any concentric lines of building owe more to contours than
ideas of symmetry. The only clear example of literal
church-centred planning that I have been able to find in a
quick search is that of Brive-la-Gaillarde, south of
Limoges, but the date of this plan and the stages by which
it developed are unknown to me. One further example is
to be found in far north-west Spain on the pilgrim road
between León and Compostela at Puertomarin. There the
church is at the centre of the village, at a point where the
irregular streets meet at a variety of angles. The church is
impeccable work of the late 12th century, but numbers on
each of the stones lead to the discovery that the village was
built anew and the church rebuilt when the original site in
the valley below was flooded for a reservoir shortly before I
first saw it in 1964.
This contrast between Roman and medieval, often on
the same site, highlights a very unfortunate and almost
total gap in our knowledge: that is, the process by which
the Roman town plan in a majority of cases fell into disuse
and the medieval pattern grew up. The church — where
instances of continuity may one day be proven — is hardly
ever a focus in terms of planning. It came late to the
Roman town and hence virtually never occupied a prime
position there — a point which makes the Silchester
building even more unusual — and if it continued in use it
had settled on to the landscape before the medieval
process of expansion began, usually on a nearby commercial
focus.
Before trying to pick out one or two particular questions
to leave in the air it is worth moving a little further
forward, for, as I have mentioned , the grid plan reappears.
One of the most satisfying new towns of this type to
survive today is Aigues-Mortes in the Camargue built by
St Louis of France in the then independent County of
Provence as an isolated French port on the Mediterranean.
In 1248 he embarked there for his Crusade, but the
silt of the Rhône has since isolated the port from the sea.
The main square and the main church are set near to the
chief land gate in the northern half of the grid, but there
are few other ancient features to note. After this, in quick
succession follow the French and English Bastides, new
military towns near the Anglo-French front lines in
Aquitaine, of which Libourne near Bordeaux and Villefranche-de-Rouerge
(1252-6) between Rodez and Cahors
are excellent examples. The new towns of Edward III in
Britain (Beresford 1967) follow in the same tradition,
which continues through Valletta in Malta (1566), Roche-
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fort-sur-Mer (c 1660) near La Rochelle, and Mannheim
(early 18th century).
One message that is conveyed very strongly by the
post-Roman examples is the connection of the gridiron
plan with newly-planned towns associated either with
defence or with a move forward into new territory. All
these towns are very positive statements, sometimes
overbearing statements, by their builders and they mark
either a stage in a campaign of conquest, reconquest (the
Bastides), or consolidation (Rochefort-sur-Mer) in the
face of antagonism, or simple non-communication (Valletta).
In all these cases, just as in Roman Britain, there were
‘native’ settlements, but the new planned towns were
intended as something different, tied more to authority
than the pre-existing nuclei, which were anarchic in plan
and inward-looking in attitude. All these points seem fair
comparisons with the imposition of Roman towns on
Britain in the 1st century AD. If I choose Valletta for more
detailed comparisons it is because I know it in more detail
than the others.
There is at once the comparison between a Britain
recently conquered and a revolt recently crushed, and the
arrival of the Order of St John in Malta and the fighting of
the Great Siege of 1565. An indigenous population was
hardly enthusiastic about the arrival of new rulers,
however much an influx of trade and money may in
hindsight have been a good thing, and the building of a
new centre of administration was quite separate from the
old civil and religious capital at Mdina in the west of the
island. We can know nothing of the feelings of those who
planned the towns of Roman Britain, but it is interesting
to record that the engineer-designer of Valletta, Laparelli,
expressed enthusiasm for competing perhaps only with
Alexandria in the creation of a completely new city, away
from the old focus of population: ‘Now the City of Malta
shall be completely and really new, since the promontory
where it shall be built has never been inhabited before’
(Council of Europe 1970, 67). Since even in 1566 it was
possible for a planner to think that he was creating
something which had never been created before and that
he vied with Alexander in choosing a virgin site, we might
legitimately assume that this dream is somehow inherent
in planning at any age.
The question of a balance between streets, buildings,
and spaces immediately returns. The two possibilities are
to let the roads run through the town unimpeded or to lead
the roads up to a central block which then acts as a focus.
In Roman Britain, in a few towns of military origin,
Crummy (1982) has suggested that the forum lay on the
site of the fortress principia, astride one of the main axes;
but even here, in most cases, the fora may finally have
moved, leaving the streets to run unobstructed, gate-togate.
In most other towns of Roman Britain, and certainly
in Valletta, the clear street plan was adopted, and apart
from Brive-la-Gaillarde and the very late example of the
Schloss at Mannheim it is very difficult to find an example
of a focus on a positive feature. In a modern town, where
the flow of traffic is important, I can understand this; in a
Roman town, or Valletta, where traffic passing through at
speed was either highly unlikely or impossible, I do not
understand it. Why in Valletta, which has only one gate so
that there is no possibility of traffic passing through, do
the Palace of the Grand Master or the Cathedral not form
centrepieces, or together form a complex, to which the