In the early 1980s, excavations started in the district of Rome that had once housed the Theatre of Balbus; 20 years later, the Crypta Balbi museum opened in the heart of the city. This unique museum traces the development in situ of a single city block in the longue durée, marking a significant change in approaches to the archaeology and history of Rome, as well as their display. Rather than privileging the ancient Roman period over all others, the Crypta Balbi takes a stratigraphic approach, showing Rome as a palimpsest, a city of layers, an urban space constantly rewritten and restructured over two millennia. Nor does it privilege the monumental over the quotidian. Instead, the Augustan-era monumental theater and portico, sponsored by the Spanish senator Lucius Cornelius Balbus, shares equal billing with various commercial and productive installations, including a Roman-period bakery and fullery, an 8th-c. lime-kiln, and a series of medieval workshops and shops that gave the street its modern name, Via delle Botteghe Oscure. The Crypta Balbi also demonstrates the importance of religious institutions for the transformation of space, with the construction of churches, a convent, and a bathhouse for a monastery within the space from the 9th c. onwards.

While the Crypta Balbi excavations were still in their early stages, a group of leading scholars of Roman topography met for a colloquium that would result in the landmark publication by L’École française de Rome of L’Urbs, espace urbain et histoire (Ier siècle av. J.-C. – IIIe siècle ap. J.-C.) in 1987. The L’Urbs volume was a monumental work. It addressed the topography of Rome from a number of angles, considering the commercial, political, and religious landscape of the Late Republican and Imperial city. Its longevity and significant influence are indicated by its reissue as part of the Classiques École française de Rome series in 2015.

The volume under review, Rome, archéologie et histoire urbaine: trente ans après l’Urbs, is intended to mark the 30-year anniversary of the original publication of L’Urbs. This new volume is based on a colloquium held in Rome in 2018 and is consciously in dialogue with the original, but the chronological scope is extended to include protohistory, Late Antiquity, and the medieval period, reflecting the developments of the last 30 years. Since the 1980s, the kind of stratigraphic approach that we see in the Crypta Balbi excavations has become the norm, resulting in a wealth of new archaeology for Late Antique and medieval Rome, driving a growth of interest in diachronic change. This makes it an excellent time to reflect on changes in archaeological and historical approaches to the topography of Rome, to consider the evolution of methodology, and to assess new advances and discoveries in the field since the publication of L’Urbs. Despite being around half the length of the original, Rome, archéologie et histoire urbaine brings together an impressive list of predominantly Italian and French scholars, whose contributions are of a consistently high standard. The extensive bibliographies that accompany each chapter will be a useful resource in their own right (although, in general, Anglophone and German scholarship is less well represented here).

Following an introduction by the editors Cyril Courrier, Jean-Pierre Guilhembet, Nicolas Laubry, and Domenico Palombi, setting out the context of the original volume and their aims for this reappraisal and updating, chapters by Manuel Royo and Maria Pia Muzzioli act as an extended preface. Royo’s contribution, written in memory of Charles Pietri, who was Director of the École française at the time of the 1985 colloquium, traces the evolution of the field since the 1980s, considering the changing approaches of researchers, including the focus on the longue durée, on the city as a lived space, and on the margins and periphery. Improvements in mapping, as demonstrated by publications such as Andrea Carandini and Paolo Carafa’s Atlante di Roma Antica, and the development of digital tools have also transformed approaches to the topography of Rome.Footnote ¹ Landmark publications include the six-volume multi-lingual Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (LTUR), edited by Eva Margareta Steinby, and the five-volume version focused on the suburbium, edited by Adriano La Regina.Footnote ² Rome, archéologie et histoire urbaine is dedicated to the memory of one of the great scholars of Roman topography, Ferdinando Castagnoli, who died the year after the publication of L’Urbs, and Muzzioli reflects on his contribution to the field. She explores Castagnoli’s manner of working; particularly interesting are the images of his notes in a mix of Italian and English for a planned but ultimately abandoned revision of Platner and Ashby’s topographical dictionary.

The remainder of the volume is divided into three sections. The first explores sources and methods, and while there is some overlap between these chapters and those of the extended preface, the authors all make important and thoughtful contributions to considerations of methodological approaches to the archaeology and literature of Rome. Castagnoli looms large in these chapters, but it is Filippo Coarelli who dominates. His skilled merging of literary and archaeological sources is described as nothing short of a “Coarellian revolution.” Palombi opens with a discussion of the synergies and tensions between literature and archaeology, a particularly profound issue for Rome, given the vast amount of literature and documentary evidence pertaining to the topography of the city. Palombi describes this as a “vocabolario urbano,” contrasting what he calls the “mute rovine” of Pompeii. Yet as he notes, the fragmentary written sources that survive were not written to explain the remains of buildings that we might chance upon; rather, these are literary representations that require careful interpretation.

Gian Luca Gregori and Silvia Orlandi focus on the role of inscriptions in illuminating Roman topography. First, Orlandi presents some case studies of the different types of information that can be gleaned from different types of epigraphy. A fragment of an architrave inscription and a dedication indicate the presence of a sacred area close to the Meta Sudans; cippi are useful for thinking about demarcation of space; funerary inscriptions are scattered with topographic references; military diplomas include details of the location in Rome in which copies must be displayed. Gregori develops this further by considering the potential role of inscriptions in revealing domus ownership and commercial topography (both discussed further below). Alessandro D’Alessio explores developments and trends in the theory and archaeological practice of Rome over the last 30 years. Here again we see the tension that can arise between the archaeological evidence and the literary sources, between the supposedly objective remains and the subjective interpretation of literature, as, for example, with Carandini’s controversial identification of the “wall of Romulus” on the Palatine. In reflecting on methodological changes, Alessio De Cristofaro considers the trend of approaching the topography of the city from a socio-economic perspective, an approach particularly prevalent in Anglo-Saxon scholarship. The city then becomes a backdrop for studies of religious, social, economic, or political life. We also encounter Rome here as a city of cultural memory, but one in which the fossilization of literary testimony can lead to a tendency to think of monuments as fixed and immovable in the landscape rather than constantly evolving and changing.

Much has been written in the last three decades about the nature of the Severan Marble Plan and its value as a cartographic document for early 3rd-c. Rome, explored here by Francesca De Caprariis. A fragment of an older and more detailed plan discovered in Via Anicia in Trastevere in 1983, together with fragments of other earlier plans such as that found in 1999 in the Temple of Peace, demonstrate the simplified nature of the Severan version, suggesting that it was more than a straightforward cartographic document and should be approached as such. Similarly, Paolo Liverani’s discussion of how to “read” graphic sources for Roman topography, particularly Renaissance drawings and maps, notes the importance of taking into account the context in which these were produced, considering aspects such as their date, purpose, provenance, and attribution, drawing on the methodology of art historians. This first section closes with a chapter by Philippe Fleury and Sophie Madeleine, indicating that while virtual reality is useful for the creation of virtual reconstructions of Rome, it can also actively contribute to debates around Roman topography. The authors are both part of the team at the University of Caen responsible since 1994 for the virtual reconstruction of 4th-c. Rome based on the early 20th-c. scale model of Paul Bigot. This fully interactive model, like the “Virtual Rome” created by Matthew Nicholls, allows users to wander through the streets of the city and test hypotheses about the topography, architecture, and sightlines of Rome.Footnote ³ To demonstrate its use as a research tool, Fleury and Madeleine present two well-illustrated case studies, the first of which relates to the southeastern side of the Capitoline Hill. One of the more interesting consequences of virtual immersion in the Forum is that the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus – the structure that supposedly dominates the skyline – is not even visible from ground level in the center of the Forum; it is necessary to climb up to the podium of the Temple of Caesar just to catch a glimpse of it. Once the Temple of Vespasian is built at the end of the 1st-c. CE, the Tabularium is also practically invisible, playing no role in the visual architecture of the Forum. Instead, if the thesis of Coarelli is correct, it is the Temple of Venus Victrix that dominates the view looking northwest from the Forum. The second case study concerns the location of the Temple of Divine Trajan and the sightlines within the forum complex of Trajan. If the virtual reconstruction is accurate, it indicates that the best place to view Trajan’s column would have been from the front porch of the temple itself.

Part two of the volume offers a set of papers focusing on different topographical areas and chronologies. Given the impossibility of covering all areas and time periods effectively, we instead see a series of case studies, covering the Forum, the Palatine, the Aventine, the Campus Martius, and the remaining hills of Rome. The chronological limits are extended back into protohistory and forward into Late Antiquity and the medieval period. Nicholas Purcell considers the relationship between the Forum and the Area Capitolina, the open space on the southern side of the Capitoline Hill. These were connected physically by the Clivus Capitolinus but, Purcell argues, also cognitively. He traces the architectural developments of the Area Capitolina from the 4th c. BCE to the Augustan era, simultaneously exploring the different functions of the space, many of which overlapped with those of the Forum. Although Fleury and Madeleine consider 4th-c CE Rome, some engagement with their chapter concerning the visual relationship between the Forum and the Capitoline, particularly after the construction of the Basilica Iulia, would have been beneficial here, as would some images and plans of the area discussed. Purcell ends by noting that in contrast to the Forum, there is no evidence for any commercial activity in the Area Capitolina, highlighting an exception to the overlapping functions of the two spaces. This may have been the case in the Republican period that is Purcell’s focus, but by Late Antiquity, this had changed: in a letter dating to 468 CE, Sidonius Apollinaris (Epist. 1.7.8) describes a luxury market in the Area Capitolina. Jens Pflug then turns to the Palatine Hill, an area that has been the subject of a wealth of new research since the publication of L’Urbs. He considers the development of the imperial palaces, concentrating in particular on the Flavian period. Paola Quaranta and Alessandra Capodiferro consider the Aventine, while Alessandra Ten focuses on the Campus Martius. The remaining hills of Rome are discussed by Clément Chillet, who takes a thematic approach, presenting the hills as distinct spaces within the city. These spaces were defined by their orography, and he explores their specific geography as hills. He discusses their place in the origins of Rome and their subsequent liminality, as well as the role played by the hills in urban life and in the urban imagination.

Anna De Santis then shifts attention to the earliest period of Rome’s development, surveying archaeological discoveries over the last 30 years; these indicate that habitation on the site of Rome went back much earlier than the Iron Age, probably as far back as the Middle Bronze Age, and consequently much earlier than the traditional foundation date of the literary sources. The final two chapters in this section extend the chronology of the volume in the other direction. Lucrezia Spera explores the topography of Christian Rome, while Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani traces changes in our knowledge and understanding of Late Antique Rome over the last three decades. In both cases, Richard Krautheimer’s publication of Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 in 1980 is presented as having opened up the field,Footnote ⁴ but as Santangeli Valenzani especially emphasizes, the development of more stratigraphic excavation practices since then has produced a wealth of new archaeological data for the period, challenging many established notions about Late Antique and medieval Rome. While Rome may have lost its political importance, for instance, it retained a commercial role and remained part of wider Mediterranean trading networks into the 8th c.

The final section is centered around new approaches. While the first two sections of the volume still seem predominantly focused on topography, these chapters are more thematic, using topographical information and archaeological material to illuminate various aspects of life in the city. Audrey Bertrand and Sylvia Estienne, for example, explore the religious landscape of Rome, arguing that rather than thinking of temples as isolated places of cult within the urban fabric, we should be thinking more of cultic zones and the interaction between religious spaces and their wider landscape. Cristina Rosillo-López and Francisco Pina Polo examine spaces of political participation in Republican Rome. They begin with the contiones and formal spaces such as the Comitium, before considering more informal avenues for the spread of political information. Rosillo-López draws on her considerable expertise in this area to present a fascinating picture of the role of the streets, the compita or crossroads, the vici or neighborhoods, and even the barber’s shops and tabernae in the spread of political rumor. Emmanuelle Rosso’s chapter is a study of the representation of imperial power, particularly in the High Empire. It focuses on three aspects: ephemeral manifestations of power, such as the processions, ceremonies, and temporary architecture of imperial funerals; imperial monuments and urban memory; and the critical re-evaluation of notions of imperial propaganda, self-celebration, and pomp, highlighting the plurality of voices, patrons, and audiences involved.

The volume then turns to more practical matters. Christer Bruun investigates the provisioning of Rome, considering the role of the suburbium and the surrounding area, as well as the logistics of transporting food and other goods from Ostia, which he promises to cover in more detail in a forthcoming monograph on the port city. Charles Davoine uses legal sources to think about the social organization and management of Rome, while Courrier and Guilhembet consider the experience of living in the city, providing an interesting and up-to-date discussion of the history of the field and the current state of scholarship in this area, moving away from the dystopian urban vision of the 1980s. Nicolas Tran’s excellent contribution, discussed further below, highlights the visibility of work and workers in the city. Finally, Alexandre Vincent explores the impact of the relatively recent development of the field of sensory studies on our understanding of life in Rome, offering an evocative description of the sights, sounds, and smells of a day at the races in the Circus Maximus, as well as more transitory sensory experiences, such as the incense of an imperial funeral, the food of public banquets, and the passing of a religious procession on its way to sacrifice.

Several themes and objects run through this coherent volume. Numerous papers, for example, consider how we might use lead water pipes (fistulae) inscribed with names in the genitive to illuminate the topography, history, or organization of the city. Hundreds of these survive from Rome and have in many cases been used to identify the location and ownership of domus in the city; just a glance through the 200 pages of entries for “domus” in LTUR II clearly demonstrates how many were identified in this way, predominantly by Werner Eck. In this volume, Chillet, for example, argues that the discovery of fistulae inscribed with aristocratic names on the hills of Rome indicates the positions of numerous elite residences, demonstrating that the hills were a privileged location for housing (231). Various other chapters, however, problematize this practice. As Davoine points out, the interpretation of the names written on fistulae is still a matter of debate (353). The fistulae do not necessarily bear the names of the owners of the houses benefitting from the right of connection to the aqueduct but could relate to the control of production workshops or to the sponsorship of public buildings. Bruun, who has undertaken detailed studies of these fistulae for over three decades, highlights here in particular the discovery of fistulae inscribed with the names of imperial procurators, which have the potential to tell us more about the organization of Rome’s water supply than home ownership (338–39). Even when these fistulae do likely indicate the ownership of a domus, its location can only be approximated. This is true even on the rare occasions when fistulae are found in situ because, as Gregori notes, the ultimate length of the water pipes remains unknown. Furthermore, we could inadvertently end up multiplying the number of domus and proprietors. A single house could have multiple owners, represented by different fistulae, over the course of its lifespan; conversely, a single person may have owned several properties, not always concentrated in the same place (60–61).

Urban boundaries, the margins of the city, and the interaction between the urbs and the suburbium also form a common theme across various chapters. Exciting new work in this area is now being undertaken by a team led by Barbara Borg as part of the ERC-funded IN-ROME Project, which promises to further our knowledge of the built environment of the suburbium and its role within city life, exploiting the potential of inscriptions to explore topographical patterns of activities in Rome’s surroundings.Footnote ⁵ In this volume, Bruun considers the role of the margins in the provisioning of the city. He notes, for instance, the enormous water basin discovered near the Lateran during archaeological excavations undertaken as part of the construction of Linea C (336–37). He argues that this was likely used for irrigation, indicating an agricultural area. Traces of industrial production were also uncovered, together with a water wheel. Bruun cites Rossella Rea’s suggestion that the name of the neighboring Porta Asinaria could derive from the frequent transportation of agricultural products in this area, demonstrating that there is archaeological and topographical evidence to support the long-held theoretical hypothesis of a strip around Rome for the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. We might then also think about the role of (sub)urban agriculture in the seasonal labor market of the city.

Chillet focuses on the eastern gates of the city as points of entry and exit to and from Rome for both people and goods, linking these with commerce, as well as with the supply of construction material for major imperial building projects (228–30). In doing so, he picks up on the theme of the urban periphery, as well as that of commercial topography, another aspect of analysis that is threaded through the volume, as it was in the original L’Urbs, which contained defining chapters by Andreau on the financial spaces of the city, Morel on the topography of production and commerce, and Etienne on the Emporium. In the volume under review, Gregori, for example, considers the place of inscriptions in illuminating the commercial landscape of Rome, while Tran emphasizes the importance of work and workers to everyday life in the city. He notes the explosion of interest in this area since the 1980s, highlighting in particular the work of Miko Flohr, and explores what he calls the “monde de la taberna” in a deliberate echo of Steven Ellis’s work on Roman retail.Footnote ⁶ As Tran notes, the trend in recent years has been less about the commercial buildings themselves and more about the world of those who lived and worked within them, considering issues such as legal status, gender, social standing, professional pride, and the development of individual and group identity. The diversity of places of work has also been increasingly recognized, as well as the visibility of work and workers, with production evident in workshops open to the street, retail extended out beyond the taberna by hawkers, ambulant vendors, and stallholders, day laborers congregating together and waiting to be hired, and construction workers openly engaged on both public and private projects.

Several chapters in the volume touch upon the issue of the reuse and recycling of building materials in Rome in Late Antiquity and the early medieval period, another area of scholarship that has seen a growth of interest in recent years as we grapple with the issue of waste and recycling in contemporary societies.Footnote ⁷ In the volume under review, both Orlandi (59) and Santangeli Valenzani (281) note the discovery of a graffito that reads Pat(---) Deci on the base of a column drum in the Temple of Mars Ultor. This can most likely be expanded to Pat(rici) Deci, with the genitive case used to mark this out as the property of one Patricius Decius. Given its location, the graffito must have been made during or after the dismantling of the temple building in the late 5th c., suggesting an organized system of removal and reuse. Patricius Decius presumably had an important role in this process. Santangeli Valenzani suggests that he was an urban prefect under Theodoric, although he might conceivably have been a private contractor responsible for the process of dismantling, a middleman selling on architectural materials, or the manager or sponsor of a new building project for which these materials were destined; he may even have been the owner or manager of a storage depot, but that seems less likely in this case given that the column drum was ultimately abandoned close to its original location rather than stored elsewhere for reuse. Santangeli Valenzani also points to an analogous 5th-c. case at the Colosseum, where Geronti V(iri) S(pectabilis) was incised on a travertine block that was removed from the structure as part of the process of demolition; again, the block was abandoned rather than reused. As a vir spectabilis, Gerontius was clearly a senator; he may have been involved in the systematic dismantling of the Colosseum in an official capacity, but it is also possible that his presence reflects private elite involvement in this practice. Different systems may also have been in place for the reuse of building material from public and private buildings.

Santangeli Valenzani demonstrates that despite the impression given by literary sources such as Procopius of continuity of the built environment of Rome into the 6th c., the process of abandonment and destruction of imperial monuments was already well underway by the second half of the 5th c. In the Forum of Caesar, for example, a furnace in one of the tabernae may have been used to melt and recycle metal originating from the process of spoliation, and the demolition of the travertine blocks delineating the western side of the Forum had also begun. Yet at the same time, new honorific statues were still being raised just meters away. Similar practices have been identified in cities in 6th-c. Asia Minor.Footnote ⁸ As Orlandi notes (60), the process of urban change in Late Antiquity was “a macchia di leopardo,” meaning that it proceeded in something of a patchy way, with some areas continuing to be used even when another part of the structure had collapsed, or had been dismantled or repurposed. This extension into Late Antiquity and the medieval period is a real strength of this important new volume, presenting Rome in the longue durée and enabling the identification of patterns of continuity and change in the city. It also highlights the transformation of our knowledge and understanding of this period over the last 30 years. As Santangeli Valenzani remarks, it will be interesting to know how many of our current certainties withstand the next 30 years of research.