Greek and Roman

city and town

planning

D.E.K.SAGAR VARMA (10633)

SUBMITTED BY
GNANA SELVAM (10645)
Greek
Greek civilization occurred in the
area around the Greek mainland,
on a peninsula that extends into
the Mediterranean Sea

It started in cities on the Greek

mainland and on islands in the
Aegean Sea

Towards the later or Hellenistic

period, Greek civilization spread
to other far away places including
Asia Minor and Northern Africa

LOCATION HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Most of the Greek mainland was
rocky and barren and therefore
bad for agriculture

Most Greeks therefore lived

along the coastline or on islands
where the soil was good for
farming

The Aegean and Mediterranean

Seas provided a means of
communication and trade with
other places

LOCATION HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

GREEK CITY PLANNING A
DESIGN
Ancient Greeks not only develop ideals of architectural aesthetics,
but they also developed principles for the design and planning of
cities as location for architecture
The ancient Greek city states developed a standard plan of the city

The city consisted of three defined elements; the town, acropolis

and Agora
Principles were developed for organizing each element of the city

based on activities and its symbolism

The town was a place to retire for the day

It was composed of simple courtyard houses separated by streets

It could either be organic or grid-iron

PRINCIPLES OF CITY PLANNING & DESIGN

The Acropolis was the city of the gods

This is where buildings reflecting the highest ideals

of beauty were placed to be seen rather than used

The principle of its design is that of isolated objects

arranged in open space

The objects are arranged to be seen in three-

dimension

The Agora was a mundane place for social,

commercial and political activities

PRINCIPLES OF CITY PLANNING & DESIGN

The principle of its design centers on creating boundaries to
contain space for activities

In practice, stoas and other civic buildings are used to loosely
define the space

These are usually treated with continuous colonnades or

porticoes along the side of the court with occasional penetrations
by footpaths

PRINCIPLES OF CITY PLANNING & DESIGN

• It has an organic plan.

ATHENS
DARK AGES (1.150BC/1.100BC-900BC)
Invasion of polonnesse which came as a blow & the athenians took time to stand up
again. The attack resulted in the reduction of population.

ATHENS
Agora was the center of athenian life. Laid out in 6 th centuary bc.,
northwet of the Acropolis, it was a square lined by public buildings,
which served Athens need for commerce & politics.

ATHENS
1791 bocage map or plan of athens, Ancient Greece

ATHENS
A plan of Athens, designed by the French consul Louis François Sébastien Fauvel, a little
before 1800. A plan of Athens, designed by the French consul Louis François Sébastien Fauvel,
a little before 1800.
The acropolis in Athens was a
religious precinct located on one of
the hills of the city.
The Earliest versions of the

Buildings in the Acropolis existed

until 480 BC
In 480 BC, the Persians under

Xerxes burnt Athens and the

Acropolis to the ground
Not long after that the Greeks

defeated the Persians

The Acropolis in Athens

The Acropolis in Athens was rebuilt in
about 450 BC
The rebuilding of the Acropolis was
begun by Pericles, the wise statesman
who ruled from 460 BC to 429 BC
Pericles commissioned artist and
architects to build a new city of
temples to glorify the gods
The acropolis combined Doric orders
and ionic orders in a perfect
composition in four buildings; the
Propylea, the Parthenon, the
Erechtheumn, and the temple of Nike.

The Acropolis in Athens

The best example of Greek
emphasis on visualization in design
and site planning is seen at the
Acropolis at Athens
All the buildings on the Acropolis
are designed to be seen than use
All the temples on the Acropolis
are place at an angle that enables
them to be seen on two sides
If a building cannot see be from
two sides, it is completely hidden

The Acropolis in Athens

From the entry at the Propylae,
a visitor has a view of all the
prominent buildings in the
Acropolis
Buildings are also position at a
distance that ensures the
appreciation of their details
The central axis of view from
the propylae is left free of
building for a view into the
country side

The Acropolis in Athens

The Agora in Athens was a space
used for social, commercial and
political activities
The Agora at Athens was located
at the base of the hill of the
Acropolis
Civic and religious buildings
were progressively erected
around the perimeter of the
Agora space

The Agora
Greek town-planning began in
the great age of Greece, the fifth
century B.C
They included streets running
parallel or at right angles to one
another and rectangular blocks of
houses;
the longer and presumably the
more important streets ran parallel
to the shore, while shorter streets
ran at right angles to them
down to the quays.
 Here is a rectangular scheme of
streets, though the outline of the
whole town is necessarily not
rectangular

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: FIRST EFFORTS

The Macedonian age brought with it, if not a new, at least a more systematic,
method of town-planning.
Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series of terraces, nearer the
foot of the hill, was laid out with public
buildings—Agora, Theatre, Stoa, Gymnasium, Temples, and so forth—and with
private houses

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE

MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C.
The whole covered an area of
about 750 yds. in length and 500
yds. in width. Priene was, therefore,
about half the size of Pompeii.

 It had, as its excavators calculate,

about 400 individual dwelling-
houses and a population possibly to
be reckoned at 4,000.

In the centre was the Agora or

market-place, with a temple and
other large buildings facing on to it

 round them were other

public buildings and some eighty
blocks of private houses, each block
measuring on an average 40 x 50
yds. and containing
four or five houses.

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE

MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C.
The broader streets,
rarely more than 23 ft.
wide, ran level along the
terraces and parallel to one
another.

Other narrower streets,

generally about 10 ft. wide,
ran at right angles up the
slopes, with steps like those
of the older
Scarborough or of Assisi.

Despite this reasoned and

systematic arrangement, no
striking artistic effects
appear to have been
attempted. No streets give
vistas of stately buildings

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE

MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C.
Roman
The typical Roman city of the later Republic and
empire had a rectangular plan and resembled a
Roman military camp with two main streets—the
cardo (north-south) and the decumanus (east-west)
—a grid of smaller streets dividing the town into
blocks, and a wall circuit with gates.

Older cities, such as Rome itself, founded before the

adoption of regularized city planning, could,
however, consist of a maze of crooked streets. The
focal point of the city was its forum, usually situated
at the center of the city at the intersection of the
cardo and the decumanus.

ROMAN CITIES
FLORENCE
In Roman
times Florence was a
'colonia‘.
This 'colonia',
like others, was laid out in
chess-board fashion, and
vestiges of its streets
survive in the Centro which
forms the heart of the
present town. The Centro
of Florence, as we see it to-
day, is very modern.

FLORENCE
The plan of Florence in 1427
shows a group of twenty
unmistakable 'insulae', each of
them about 1-1/8 acre in area,
that is, very similar in size to the
'insulae' of Turin. This group is
bounded by the modern streets
Tornabuoni on the west, Porta
Rossa on the south, Calzaioli on
the east, Teatina on the north; it
covers a rectangle of some 305 x
327 yds., not quite 21 acres.

FLORENCE
There are, or were, traces of Roman baths in
the Via delle Terme, and it has been thought that the
town stretched riverwards as far as the old gate Por S.
Maria and thePiazza S. Trinità. The gate, however, is ill-
placed and the line of wall implied by this theory is
irregular. The mediaeval streets
point rather to a south wall near the Via Porta Rossa.
There were also theatres, a shrine of Isis, and, outside
the Roman limit, an amphitheatre still discernible in the
curves of certain streets .However small Florentia was, it
possessed the true elements of the Roman town.

FLORENCE
The Por S. Maria may even be due to
one of the reconstructions of Florence in
the Middle
Ages. At the end we must admit that
without further evidence the limits of
Roman Florence cannot be fixed for
certain. But
the limits indicated above give the not
unsuitable dimensions of 46 acres (380 x
590 yds.), while the history of the twenty
indubitable insulae of the Centro
remains full of interest. We see here, as
clearly as anywhere in the Roman world,
how the
regular Roman plan has gradually been
distorted by encroachments and how,
even in its irregularity, it has had power
to drive
modern builders towards its ancient
fashion.

FLORENCE
PRESENT
FLORENCE
ROME
1800
ROME
ROME
PRESENT
ROME
OTHER EXAMPLES
OTHER EXAMPLES
Inferences
• Greeks built small towns appropriate for
human scale

• Natural borders for the town

• Parts of the town were planned according

to geometrical patterns and others
according to defensive measures

• Democracy, Buildings of poor and rich

are a side, public baths.

• Agora in the center and includes :

– Assembly hall
– Council hall
– Chamber hall

GREEK TOWNS
• plenty of towns in invaded areas
- medium towns for about
50000. to keep agriculture
around
• Division of agricultural land into
rectangular parcels.
• Grid pattern for most of
Roman cities
• The city was divided into
neighborhoods and quarters with
their own centers
• Two major and central
intersected roads :
– Cardo : North South
– Decomanus : East West
* The Forum at the
intersection of the two
major roads : the central
public space Torino - Italy

ROMAN CITIES
THANK
YOU