Academic literature on the topic 'Colonnaded streets'

The rise of suburbs and disinvestment from cities have been defining features of life in many countries over the course of the twentieth century, especially English-speaking ones. The separation of different aspects of life, such as living and working, and the diffusion of the population in far-flung garden homes have necessitated an enormous consumption of natural lands and the constant use of mechanized transportation. Why did we abandon our dense, complex urban places and seek to find “the best of the city and the country” in the flowery suburbs? A large missing piece in this story is found

Abstract Although the origin of Palmyra goes back to at least the Bronze Age, it is from the Hellenistic period that archaeological evidence from this site becomes more frequent. The process of monumentalization of the settlement peaked between the first and third centuries, when the majority of the public monuments known at this site were constructed. The aim of this chapter is to provide the reader with a brief overview of some of the most important public monuments of Palmyra before and after the events of 272–273 that brought the settlement to its knees. These include the agora complex, the theatre, the amphitheatre, colonnaded streets (with a specific focus on the Great Colonnade), and marketplaces.

Certainly a striking city in its day, Perga (also spelled Perge) today still is an impressive place to visit. Its theater, stadium, agora, towers, baths, and colonnaded streets give the visitor a good sense of what an ancient city was like. Perga is located in the ancient region of Pamphylia, approximately 9 miles east of Antalya. To visit the site, take highway 400 east from Antalya to the town of Aksu, in which there is a yellow sign on the left that points to Perga, which is a little more than a mile north of Aksu. The Aksu Çayï (the ancient Cestrus River) comes within 3 miles of the site on its way to the Mediterranean, approximately 7 miles away. In ancient times Perga apparently had a port on the river, which was navigable, thus allowing the city to benefit commercially from the river. Ancient tradition claims that Perga was founded after the Trojan War by Greek settlers under the leadership of Calchas (a seer whose prophecies helped the Greeks in the war) and Mopsus (another ancient seer). The acropolis at Perga, however, was inhabited much earlier than this, even during the Bronze Age. When Alexander the Great came through the area in 333 B.C.E., the city of Perga offered no resistance to him. Some of the people from Perga even served as guides to lead a part of Alexander’s army from Phaselis into Pamphylia. After Alexander’s death, the city was controlled by the Ptolemies and then by the Seleucid rulers. One of the most famous natives of Perga during the Hellenistic period was Apollonius, a 3rd-century-B.C.E. mathematician who wrote a ninevolume work on conics. His works were important contributions to astronomy and geometry. He studied in Alexandria and later lived in Pergamum. After the defeat of the Seleucids by the Romans in 189 B.C.E. at the battle of Magnesia, Perga became a part of the Pergamene kingdom. Bequeathed to Rome in 133 B.C.E. by the last Pergamene king, Attalus III, the city came under Roman control four years later, as a part of the Roman province of Asia Minor.

We take the opportunity of modifying ideas presented in Volume I, and responding to queries raised by reviewers and other commentators. 1. Street fountains. It was claimed in Volume I (p. 252) that the cutting back of the fac¸ade of I.10.1 to create space round the fountain was almost without parallel in the city: the only other places where we could point to similar sacrifices being made, either for fountains or for the distribution tanks and watertowers which were an integral part of the distribution system provided to feed them, were at the southern tip of Insula VI.1 and the south-east corner of VI.14. We suggested, therefore, that the owner or occupier of I.10.1, rather than being subject to an expropriation order, may have yielded the space voluntarily. It is certainly true that street fountains and water-towers were as far as possible sited to avoid impinging upon existing buildings, even though the installations in question almost invariably ended up both encroaching upon the sidewalk and projecting into the carriageway. In some cases, as at the northeast corner of VI.8, there was no great problem, because there was suficient space for pedestrians and wheeled trafic to get past without dificulty. In other places, the street was closed to vehicles, so the fountain could project freely into the carriageway or even stand wholly within it: such was the case at the north-west corner of VI.13, where the lack of ruts and a strategically placed bollard at the south end conform that the Vico del Labirinto was for pedestrians only. The western stretch of the Via dell’Abbondanza, between the forum and the Via Stabiana crossing, was at least partially closed to vehicles, but there was, in any case, no shortage of space for the fountains at the south-east corners of VII.9 and VII.14. At the north end of the Via delle Scuole, closed off by the forum colonnade, it was even possible to site a fountain in the middle of the road. In other cases, however, accommodating the fountain presented serious difficulties. At the south-east corner of VII.4, for instance, the fountain jutted into the street so far as to leave only a narrow gap for wheeled trafic to squeeze through, and ultimately the street was closed.

Tarsus, best known as the home of the Apostle Paul, was the principal city of the eastern Cilician plain. A city renowned in antiquity as a center of culture and learning, Tarsus was visited by such figures as Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra. Recent excavations have uncovered more remains of the city from Hellenistic and Roman times, including a paved, colonnaded street. Tarsus, the capital of the ancient province of Cilicia, is located near the eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Situated today 10 miles inland from the sea, Tarsus served as a port city because the Cydnus River (today the Tarsus Çayï) passed through Tarsus on its way to the sea. The river was navigable by ships from the Mediterranean coast to Tarsus. Lake Rhegma, a lagoon near the Mediterranean coast into which the river flowed, served as the harbor for Tarsus. During the 6th century C.E., Emperor Justinian moved the course of the Cydnus River to the east of Tarsus, while leaving several minor branches of the river to flow through the city. The city of Tarsus belonged to the region of Asia Minor known as Cilicia. Ancient Cilicia was composed of two parts, Cilicia Pedias (“flat” or “smooth” Cilicia) and Cilicia Trachaei (“rough” Cilicia). Cilicia Pedias was a fertile plain in the eastern part of the region, whereas Cilicia Trachaei was a rugged, heavily forested mountainous region in the western part, dominated by the Taurus Mountains. Tarsus, the major city of Cilicia Pedias, was located just south of the Cilician Gates, the main pass through the Taurus Mountains. Through this pass ran the major road connecting Syria to Asia Minor, thus providing Tarsus access to trade and travel over land as well as over the Mediterranean. The earliest settlement at Tarsus was likely at Gözlü Kule, a tumulus on the southeast side of modern Tarsus. Excavations under the direction of Hetty Goldman of Princeton University before and immediately after World War II at the tumulus discovered evidence that the site was occupied from Neolithic to Islamic times. At least as early as the 3rd millennium B.C.E., a fortified town existed at the site of Tarsus.

While the urban fabric has both three and two dimensional aspects, we rarely if ever experience urban form as a fully three-dimensional object nor as a two-dimensional ground plan. Rather, the urban fabric is experienced more in terms of places with a fractal dimension lying between two and three. Hence we can (re)interpret urban form elements from colonnades to streets as ‘fractal’ types. This in turn suggests the possibility for a ‘fractal’ typo-morphology, addressing elements that occupy a typological space ‘in between’ 3D architectural modelling and 2D urban plan analysis. While Moudon cou