The
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
word (; : ) was used in
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of Roman civilization
*Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...
cities to mean either a
city block
A city block, residential block, urban block, or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design.
In a city with a grid system, the block is the smallest group of buildings that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are th ...
in a city plan (i.e. a building area surrounded by four streets)
or later a type of
apartment building
An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement ( Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) ...
that occupied such a city block specifically in Rome and nearby
Ostia.
The latter type of ''Insulae'' were known to be prone to fire and rife with disease.
A standard Roman city plan was based on a
grid
Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to:
Space partitioning
* Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs
** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...
of orthogonal (laid out on right angles) streets.
It was founded on ancient Greek city models, described by
Hippodamus
Hippodamus of Miletus (; Greek: Ἱππόδαμος ὁ Μιλήσιος, ''Hippodamos ho Milesios''; c.480 BCE, 480–408 BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek architect, urban planner, physician, mathematician, meteorologist and philosophe ...
. It was used especially when new cities were established, e.g. in Roman .
The streets of each city were designated the ''
decumani'' (east–west-oriented) and ''
cardines
A ''cardo'' (: ''cardines'') was a north–south street in ancient Roman cities and military camps as an integral component of city planning. The ''cardo maximus'', or most often the ''cardo'', was the main or central north–south-oriented stre ...
'' (north–south). The principal streets, the ''decumanus maximus'' and ''cardo maximus'', intersected at or close to the
forum
Forum or The Forum may refer to:
Common uses
*Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States
*Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city
**Roman Forum, most famous example
* Internet forum, discussion board ...
, around which the most important public buildings were sited.
References
Sources and further reading
*The Insula IX Excavation: http://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/town-life/insula_ix.php
*Pompeii Insula 9: http://donovanimages.co.nz/proxima-veritati/insula-9/index.html
History of urban planning
Ancient Roman city planning
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