Familiarity was the aim of such a standard form of town planning. The dimensions of the castra were often standard as well, with each of its four walls generally having a length of 2150 feet. Firstly, Roman castra were often sited on flat land, especially in close proximity to or on important nodes like river crossings or intersection trade routes. Despite being similar in form to the Greek version of a grid, the Roman grid was ultimately designed on the basis of being practical. The military expansion of this period facilitated the grid form becoming the standard, as Romans established "castra" firstly as military centres in their territories, some of which would develop into administrative hubs as well. Instead, the Roman Grid was spread around the Mediterranean and into northern Europe later on during "the late Republic and the early Empire" period that saw dissemination of the grid plan throughout this area. According to Stanislawski, there is little evidence that the Romans adopted the Etruscan model at Marzabatto early in their expansion. It was based on Greek Ionic ideas, and it was here that the main east-west and north-south axes of a town (the decumanus maximus and cardo maximus respectively) could first be seen in Italy. The Etruscan people, whose territories encompassed what would eventually become Rome (Rix cited in Woodward 2008), founded what is now the Italian city of Marzabotto at the end of the 6th century BC. This was probably best exemplified in Priene, in present-day western Turkey, where the orthogonal city grid was laid out according with respect to the cardinal points, on sloping terrain that struck views out towards a river and the aforementioned city of Miletus. The Greek grid had its streets aligned roughly in relation to the cardinal points and generally looked to take advantage of visual cues based on the hilly landscape typical of Greece and Asia Minor. His conquests were a step in the propagation of the grid plan throughout colonies, some as far-flung as Taxila in Pakistan, that would later be mirrored by the expansion of the Roman Empire. The concept of a grid being the ideal method of town-planning became widely accepted by the time of Alexander the Great. However, it slowly gained primacy through the work of Hippodamus of Miletus, who slowly planned and replanned many Greek cities in accordance with this form. The idea of the archetypal Roman Grid was introduced to Italy first by the Greeks, with such information transferred by way of trade and conquest.Īlthough the grid was an idea present in Hellenic societal and city planning, it was not pervasive prior to the 5th century BC. Perhaps the most well-known grid system is that spread through the colonies of the Roman Empire.
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