Building a Roman City

Building a Roman city

By David Macaulay

The intelligence and physical strengths of a Roman city is,the engineers throughout the winter measuring and designing,and drawing, But by the spring of 25 b.c (the Roman year 728), the main street running from north to south was now called cardo and the one from east to west was called the decumanus. They were both widened and had more length and the rectangular area of the places was increased to seven hundred and twenty yards long by six hundred and twenty yards wide, this space allowed a maximum population of approximately 50,000. The entire area was divided by roads into a chessboard pattern. A high wall designed around the city in which fortified gates were located where the main streets cut through. Around the city but inside the wall a thirty-foot-wide strip of land called the pomerium was marked off, it represented the city’s limits or boundary. They designed a new and larger forum which was to become the government and religious center for the city. They made public water fountains, the aqueduct that would bring water up,a central food market, and publics baths and toilets, and an entertainment center and its made up of a theater and a amphitheater. They also set aside some spaces for building the the future. No privately owned buildings could be higher than twice the width of the roads or streets on which it stood, witch this made it so that sunlight always reach the roads or streets. People’s buildings that faced the main road, to build at their own expense and it was required. The master plan allowed much freedom for the people or residents and it determined the appearance and the character of the city through the building the people would make for themselves. Some of the insulae designated for private ownership were equally divided up among the soldiers, traders, and the farmers. Even though land was given to Verbonia’s first settlers, each person that wanted to build a house had to pay for the construction. In the summer of 25b.c a plow pulled by a white cow and a white bull guided by the leader of the city or community cut a furrow around the site. This ceremony marked the location of the city wall. The surveyors marked off the roads or street using a instrument called the groma to make sure the roads intersected at the right angles. The groma was a pole and it was about four feet high and on the top of witch a cross laid flat. The most materials used in the construction of Verbonia was stone,clay,mortar,and wood. The wood was used for scaffolding and for a roof frame, the mortar was used between stones and bricks, and the clay was made into bricks and tiles.