A ''cardo'' (: ''cardines'') was a north–south street in

ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

cities and military camps as an integral component of

city planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

. The ''cardo maximus'', or most often the ''cardo'', was the main or central north–south-oriented street.

Etymology

“Cardo” is the Latin word for "hinge". Being the hinge the turning point of the doors, the word ''cardo'' would also be used to designate other “turning points”, like the North Pole of the sky, or the four ''cardinal'' directions (quattuor ''cardines'' orbis terrarum). Also the “the principal line laid down in surveying land was called ''cardo''", which is also applied to the first street of a city: the street around which the city would be structured. Most Roman cities also had a ''

decumanus maximus In Roman urban planning, a ''decumanus'' was an east–west-oriented road in a Roman city or '' castrum'' (military camp). The main ''decumanus'' of a particular city was the ''decumanus maximus'', or most often simply "the ''decumanus''". In t ...

'', an east–west street that served as a secondary main street. Due to varying geography, in some cities the ''decumanus'' is the main street and the ''cardo'' is secondary, but in general the ''cardo maximus'' served as the primary street. The forum was normally located at, or close to, the intersection of the ''decumanus'' and the ''cardo''.

Examples

Apamea, Syria

The ''cardo maximus'' of

Apamea, Syria Apamea (, ''Apameia''; ), on the right bank of the Orontes river, Orontes River, was an ancient Greek and Roman city. It was the capital of Apamene under the Macedonians, became the capital and Metropolitan Archbishopric of late Roman province R ...

, ran through the centre of the city directly from North to South, linked the principal gates of the city, and was originally surrounded by 1,200 columns with unique spiral fluting, each subsequent column spiralling in the opposite direction. The thoroughfare was about 1.85 kilometres long and 37 metres wide, as it was used for wheeled transport. The great colonnade was erected in the 2nd century and it was still standing until the 12th. The earthquakes of 1157 and 1170 demolished the colonnade. The ''cardo'' was lined on both sides with civic and religious buildings.

Cologne, Germany

Hohe Strasse and Schildergasse in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, Germany, are examples of streets that have maintained their course and function of ''cardo'' and ''decumanus maximus'' to this day.

Jerash, Jordan

The excavations at

Jerash Jerash (; , , ) is a city in northern Jordan. The city is the administrative center of the Jerash Governorate, and has a population of 50,745 as of 2015. It is located 30.0 miles north of the capital city Amman. The earliest evidence of sett ...

, Jordan, have unearthed the remains of an ancient Roman city on the site, with the main feature of the city being a colonnaded ''cardo''. The original road surface survived. Jerusalem Cardo 2

Jerusalem

During the visit of

Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...

Judea Judea or Judaea (; ; , ; ) is a mountainous region of the Levant. Traditionally dominated by the city of Jerusalem, it is now part of Palestine and Israel. The name's usage is historic, having been used in antiquity and still into the pres ...

in the 130s AD, Jerusalem's ruins were surveyed, and Hadrian decided to build a Roman colony in its place, naming it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, after the Roman deities

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

, Juno and

Minerva Minerva (; ; ) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Be ...

(the

Capitoline Triad The Capitoline Triad was a group of three deities who were worshipped in ancient Roman religion in an elaborate temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill (Latin ''Capitolium''). It comprised Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. The triad held a central place in th ...

), worshiped at the

Capitoline Hill The Capitolium or Capitoline Hill ( ; ; ), between the Roman Forum, Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the Seven Hills of Rome. The hill was earlier known as ''Mons Saturnius'', dedicated to the god Saturn (mythology), Saturn. The wo ...

temple in Rome. Like many Roman colonies, Aelia Capitolina was laid out with a Hippodamian

grid plan In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogon ...

of narrower streets and wider avenues. Notably, the decision was one of the main causes of the

Bar Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

, which shortly encompassed the region. The main north–south thoroughfare, the ''cardo maximus'', was originally a paved avenue approximately 22.5 meters wide (roughly the width of a six lane highway) which ran southward from the site of the

Damascus Gate The Damascus Gate is one of the main Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is located in the wall on the city's northwest side and connects to a highway leading out to Nablus, which in the Hebrew Bible was called Shechem or Sichem, and from the ...

, terminating at an unknown point. The southern addition to the ''cardo'', constructed under

Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

in the 6th century AD, extended the road further south to connect the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem. The church is the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchat ...

with the newly built Zion Gate. Along its length, the roadway was divided into three parts: two colonnaded covered walks flanking a 12 meter wide road. The shaded porticoes provided separation of pedestrian traffic from wheeled carts, shelter from the elements, space for small-scale commerce, as well as opportunities for residents and visitors to gather and interact. The central open pavement provided commercial access as well as ritual space. The ''cardo'''s most striking visual feature was its

colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

, clearly depicted on the

Madaba Map The Madaba Map, also known as the Madaba Mosaic Map, is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George in Madaba, Jordan. The mosaic map depicts an area from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in the south, and fro ...

. Simple bases supported monolithic shafts, spaced 5.77 meters apart. The shafts supported Byzantine-style Corinthian capitals – intricately carved, but more stylized versions of their Classical counterparts. Although this combination of elements was uniform the preserved examples display some variation in the profile and size of the bases, and in the pattern of the capitals. Despite aesthetic differences, the approximate height of the base, column, and capital units of the colonnade was five meters, a height which contributed to the spaciousness of the porticoes. The wall of the ''cardo'''s eastern portico featured an arcade that housed various stalls and workshops leased by craftsmen and merchants. The line of the ''cardo maximus'' is still visible on the Jewish Quarter Street, though the original pavement lies several meters below the modern street level. In the 7th century, when Jerusalem fell under Muslim rule, the ''cardo'' became an Arab-style marketplace. Remains of the Byzantine ''cardo'' were found in the Jewish Quarter excavations beginning in 1969. In 1971, a plan for preserving the ancient street was submitted by architects Peter Bogod, Esther Krendel and Shlomo Aronson. Their proposal relied heavily on the sixth century Madaba Map, a mosaic map of Jerusalem found in 1897 in

Madaba Madaba (; Biblical Hebrew: ''Mēḏəḇāʾ''; ) is the capital city of Madaba Governorate in central Jordan, with a population of about 60,000. It is best known for its Byzantine art, Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics, especially a large Byz ...

, Jordan. The map clearly showed the Roman ''cardo'' as the main artery through the Old City. The architects proposed a covered shopping arcade that would preserve the style of an ancient Roman street using contemporary materials. Their plan was based on the hope that archeologists would find remains of the southern end of the ''cardo'', an extension of the north–south Roman thoroughfare built during the Byzantine era (324–638). Time was of the essence and mounting pressure to repopulate the Jewish Quarter led to the construction of a superstructure which allowed the residential buildings to be built. At the same time, the archaeologists continued to work below. The project was 180 meters in total and was divided into eight sections to allow for construction teams to move quickly from one section to another. By 1980, 37 housing units and 35 shops were built, incorporating archaeological finds such as a Hasmonean wall from the second century BC and rows of

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

columns. The combination of old and new is also visible on the Street of the Jews, where the shops have been set into old vaults and the gallery is covered by an arched roof containing small apertures to allow for natural lighting.

Beit She'an, Israel

Beit She'an Beit She'an ( '), also known as Beisan ( '), or Beth-shean, is a town in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. The town lies at the Beit She'an Valley about 120 m (394 feet) below sea level. Beit She'an is believed to ...

was one of a group of 10

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

cities known as

Decapolis The Decapolis (Greek: ) was a group of ten Greek Hellenistic cities on the eastern frontier of the Greek and late Roman Empire in the Southern Levant in the first centuries BC and AD. Most of the cities were located to the east of the Jordan ...

on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Syria and Judea. It was a self-governed city established by the Romans to promote Roman culture. It was built with a central ''cardo'', temples, theaters, baths and other public buildings, and minted its coins.

Beirut, Lebanon

The ''cardo maximus'' was the main north–south street of Roman

Berytus Berytus (; ; ; ; ), briefly known as Laodicea in Phoenicia (; ) or Laodicea in Canaan from the 2nd century to 64 BCE, was the ancient city of Beirut (in modern-day Lebanon) from the Roman Republic through the Roman Empire and late antiquity, Ear ...

. A section of the street – 100 meters long or so – was discovered during excavation works, flanked by two rows of limestone pedestals. These pedestals once carried 6-meter-high columns supporting roofed colonnades on either side of the street. A stairway in the eastern colonnade gave access to a large building complex. The ''cardo maximus'' connected the forum to another complex that extended from the present Al-Azariyeh building to Riad Al Solh Square. Archaeological excavations uncovered two successive levels of the street, the oldest dating to the 2nd century CE. The later, wider street was laid out during the 4th century AD. The floors of the colonnades on both levels of the ''cardo maximus'' were embellished with mosaic pavements. These were covered, in the 6th century CE, with a thin coat of white lime plaster. Fragments of the floors remained in use until the 19th century. Roman columns were re-used in the foundations of later buildings constructed within the pavement of the ''cardo'', reducing the main street of Roman Berytus into a small alley.Saghieh-Beydoun, Muntaha, 'Allam, Mahmoud, 'Ala'Eddine, Abdallah and Abulhosn, Sana (1998–9), "The Monumental Street ''Cardo Maximus'' and the Replanning of Roman Berytus", Bulletin d'Archéologie et d'Architecture Libanaises 3:95-126.

Poreč, Croatia

In the seaside resort of

Poreč Poreč (; known also by several alternative names) is a town and municipality on the western coast of the Istrian peninsula, in Istria County, west Croatia. Its major landmark is the 6th-century Euphrasian Basilica, which was designated a UN ...

, Croatia, both ''cardo maximus'' and ''

decumanus In Roman urban planning, a ''decumanus'' was an east–west-oriented road in a Ancient Rome, Roman city or ''Castra, castrum'' (military camp). The main ''decumanus'' of a particular city was the ''decumanus maximus'', or most often simply "the ...

'' have retained their original names and still serve as the main streets of the historic town centre.

References

External links

Exhaustive and progressing list of cardos with photographs
on a Jerusalem photo portal
Cardo Virtual Tour
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080116232009/http://www.3disrael.com/jerusalem/cardo_inside.cfm , date=16 January 2008 Ancient Roman city planning Meridians (geography) Geopositioning markers