Forums into Piazzas; Public Spaces in Ancient and Modern Italy

By Alexander Young

All photos taken by the author unless otherwise noted

1. Introduction: General Background on Forums and Piazzas

The biggest shock for me visiting Italy for the first time from the comparatively introverted and car centric Pacific Northwest of the United States was seeing just how full Italy is with public life in comparison. It seemed that just by walking 2 minutes I would stumble into a new square full of people, with beautiful architecture surrounding it, and stunning fountains and markets within. All of this made me strongly interested in how Italy was able to build and maintain these centers of public life, and the engineering and planning behind it. This paper explores those details.

Societies generally require public spaces for social and political life to occur, and in Rome this is often done by forums and piazzas. The ancient Romans designed and engineered their forums to act as hubs that served their citizens’ physical and social needs, while showing off their engineering prowess, and their descendants built their piazzas in similar but distinct ways. Forums acted more as centers of government and administration in Roman cities, while piazzas were more often localized to different parts of a city and focused on the specific buildings that centered them.

Piazza translates to square in Italian, and these squares are found all over Italian cities and villages in different sizes, holding host to both grand monuments and smaller markets. Forum translates to a public meeting place. Roman society was famous for the planning and the monumentality of their forums, with many of them hosting world famous temples and landmarks, such as the coliseum. This expertise expanded and changed over time towards the piazzas that tourists flock to to experience Italian public life. Generally for the purpose of this paper forums are Roman and piazzas are Italian, and for cases where they both apply the terms public space or square will be used.

2. Purposes of Public Space

Roman and Italian societies had many needs, many of which were served by the forums and Piazzas they built. Below is a chart that shows some of the purposes of different piazzas, many of which also applied to older Roman forums.

In the chart in Figure 2.1 there is generally a scale from large monumental squares to smaller local markets and parks. This paper will be focusing more on large central plazas, with monumental buildings and heavy engineering intensity from water and transportation. However, even if not covered as much, these smaller market piazzas were just as important for everyday life.

Below are several of the essential needs that Italian public space address.

• Physical: Such as food, water, and commercial goods. This is usually achieved by a combination of public fountains and markets.
• Political: Such as political gathering places and monuments. Usually this comes in the form of public meeting house and palaces. Monuments can be anything grand that shows the power of the ruling elite.
• Religious: Places for the citizens to worship and engage in religious practice. This is often intertwined  with political needs, as political leaders can have a lot of religious power (such is the case with my temples to deified roman emperors) and religious leaders can have a lot of political power (as in the case of prominent church leaders of massive cathedrals). These needs are usually served by large temples or churches, and these structures are often the monumental focus of their own piazzas, as is often seen in Renaissance piazzas.
• Social: Places for people to gather, socialize, and find entertainment. Many squares have open spaces or fountains for people to congregate around that can act as local social centers. Larger public spaces can also feature mass entertainment venues, such as the Roman Forum being host to the Coliseum, and the Piazza Navona initially being the Stadium of Domitian.

3. General Engineering Considerations

Designing good public spaces requires several aspects engineering, such as hydraulic, transportation, and construction engineering. Hydraulic engineering was used to transport water to these public squares to power fountains, nasones, and even stadiums for sea battles (in the case of Piazza Navona). Transportation engineering was also needed in several aspects, such as how the major public spaces were placed relative to major roads and supply routes, and how they fit into the fabric of the city. Finally there was the construction engineering of the forums themselves, such as paving and road material, and then for the constriction of the buildings surrounding it

Main forums were generally set at the crossroads of the two cross streets, the north south Cardo, and the east west decumanus (Fusch, 1994, p3). The roads were often paved with large basalt stones to withstand the weight of cart and pedestrian traffic connecting to other regions of the empire. This provided a route for goods to be sold in markets nearby, as well as a route for construction materials needed to build the monuments in these forums.

Water features and fountains were powered by aqueducts that brought water to the castellum, a type of holding tank, which was then first distributed to public water fountains through underground pipes, powered by water pressure (Dembskey, 2009, p82). The pipes were usually ceramic or lead and maintained a constant water flow through them. Because the water was continuously flowing, the water didn’t have to deal with as much lead contamination, and the pipes were able to resist rupture. Everyday Romans could go to these public fountains to meet their daily fresh water needs, and even today the remnants of that exist in the form of continuously flowing Nasones in most piazzas that distribute clean water. This aqueduct water was also occasionally used to flood many stadiums to allow for sea battles and water recreation (Dellacasa, 2024).

Forums and Piazzas are usually paved in manners that allow for the firm movement of goods and people, but also create a pleasant environment for people staying nearby. This usually comes in the form of cobblestone paving of the entire square, with occasional separation between pedestrian and cart routes on the square.

Most monumental public squares have large religious and political buildings around them. In the case of Roman temples they are often held up by lenticulars, with grand pillars and arches to give a grander imposing feel. In contrast modern piazzas typically have large cathedrals next to them, which use buttressed arches and domes to the support the weight of these large religious spaces.

4. General Change and Continuity Through Time

Social spaces in Rome evolved over time, from polis to forum to piazza, and the use of said places changed over the centuries. Some places, like the Roman Forum, grew from field to political center and then back to field again, while some changed from stadium to market, such as Piazza Navona. Then there were many general changes, such as temples changing to churches after Christianization, and areas gaining and losing markets and other types of infrastructure. Finally, as there are a lot of examples of general continuity and change in roman public spaces, the examples of the Roman Forum and the Piazza Navona will be helpful as a focused explainer to these changes.

Piazzas have a lot of historical ancestry that shape them, as, “The immediate antecedent of present-day Italian piazzas is the Roman forum. The exact origins of forums in Roman cities are unknown, but they probably derived their conceptual and design criteria from at least two sources: the Greek agora, and the small quadrangular centers with crossing streets in the Etruscan settlements of northern and central Italy” (Fusch, 1994, p3). This tracks with how we find roman forums built, especially if built by the legions, as public meeting centers marked by the major roads. The Greek agora was a political center, so the Romans, as they liked to do, followed the Greek model and made their forums into a well planned political and religious center. This can be seen in the design of Ostia antica, a planned roman city (figure 4.1), where the main theatres and forums all followed the major roads and their intersections. With the proper planning, power and social life would radiate out from the center along the main roads. However, as Rome started to decline the level of planning started to decrease, and public space started to develop more organically. “As time passed public open space was associated with the powers that dominated city life, principally the Christian church (Vance 1990, 80-109; Kostof 1991, 48-51). As a result the church greatly influenced the morphology of the early medieval city.”(Fusch, 1994, p4). This resulted in a shift of focus from the central political and entertainment services of the forum to a new localized public space of the Italian piazza. The public function was still there, as where many of the services, but the monumentality became more Christian. From Fusch again, “The most significant open space was in front of the church for use as a market, for public gatherings, and, most importantly, for religious ceremonies.” (Fusch, 1994, p. 4). This can be seen in the layout of medieval to renaissance era cities like Florence, in how many of the major piazzas surround or are next to a major church that defines them, with all other uses following from that (See figure 4.2). Leading into the modern era, public spaces mix aspects of roman forums and medieval piazzas to form places that are both monumental and religious, accessible to the outside world yet personal to a community. However, to explore such a large process of change and continuity it is helpful to have concrete case studies to observe, which the Roman Forum and Piazza Navona do very well.

5. The Ancient Roman Forum

The Roman Forum in ancient Rome was the central forum of a network of forums that made up the center of the central city of the western world. It contained in or next to it many of the most monumental buildings and locations of the Roman world, such as the senate buildings, temple of Saturn, the coliseum, and the palatine hill, which was the seat of the emperors during the imperial golden age. It also had several of the most important Roman roads converging in its vicinity, large arteries pumping resources into the beating heart of the empire.

The Roman Forum began as a marshy area (Aicher, 2013, p. 72) without any structures that had to be drained to be useful, and it was used as a pasture and burial ground before the rise of Rome. However, as the Roman kingdom passed to the republic and the city of Rome began to develop, infrastructure started to develop in and around the Forum. One of the most important early pieces of infrastructure was the Cloaca Maxima (Aicher, 2013, p. 79) which functioned as the primary sewer system of ancient Rome, and is still a part of the Roman sewer system to this day. The forum also became host to the most important functions of Roman government. This included the curia, or senate houses of the republic and empire (Aicher, 2013, p. 26-30), and the palatine hill with the executive heads of Rome. Finally, with the increasing riches of the republic and empire it became host to many monuments and temples to gods and emperors. Notable temples would include the temple of Saturn (Aicher, 2013, p. 35), which was a very important god in Roman mythology, as well as some of the temples to the deified leaders of Rome, such Caesar, Romulus and Vespasian (Aicher, 2013, p. 43-44). It also hosted monuments to the important deeds of emperors, such as the arch of Titus and the arch of Constantine. While it was around, all of these monumental structures in the forum attested to the strength and piety of the Roman political system, for all those who would come to the central forum to engage in public life and sate their political, religious and social needs. Unfortunately, as the empire fell so to did the forum, and it would slowly return back to the state of pasture that it started as.

The Roman Forum is a great example of a proto piazza and public space in general because of how many different public purposes it manages to cover. It primarily fulfilled the political needs of ancient Rome by hosting the government, and the monuments were able to act as a source of pride and awe for the average Roman citizen. It secondarily was able to fulfill religious needs by hosting many of the most important temples in the city. It also managed to serve the social needs of the citizens in the form of the coliseum, which acted as a large source of entertainment for the masses and as a place to go to socialize. Finally, although it wasn’t a big focus for the forum itself, it did help with Rome’s physical needs by providing to Cloaca Maxima to deal with sanitation. Over all it acted as a model that the Roman Empire would use to shape the rest of their forums off of, and which more modern Italians would use to base their piazzas off of.

6. The Piazza Navona of the Renaissance and Modern Day

First built in 86 CE, Piazza Navona made to be a stadium during Domitian’s Time (Dellacasa 2024). It retained its purpose until the 8th century until there was a church built next to it. Slowly during the middle ages the stadium was disassembled and markets and political events began being held there. Then starting in the 17th Century there was a massive Baroque shift that led to a change in the style of the piazza. From that Pope Innocent the 10th helped support the construction of the grand central fountain there (Fountain of four rivers). When the 20th century came, it became a parking lot in the 50s and 60s, before becoming Italy’s first pedestrian island in 1968.

Piazza Navona fulfills many of the different roles of Italian Piazzas, from a relic role due to its history, a monumental role with its cathedrals and palaces, a mercantile role with its historical markets, a park role with its prominent fountains, to a final vehicular role in the 1950s and 60s as a place to store cars. In ancient Rome it fulfilled mostly social entertainment needs in the form of the Stadium of Domitian, before that started to fall apart with the empire. Afterwards in the medieval era it shifted to deal with physical needs in the form of its public markets (figure 6.3). Then in the Renaissance it had a baroque revival that shifted it to dealing with political and social needs in the form of cathedrals, such as the Church of Sant ‘Agnese and palaces such as the Pamphilj Palace. It also started to fulfill the needs of social and park spaces with its three fountains, the Fontana del Moro in the south, Fontana del Neptune in the North and the Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Center (ArcheoRoma) (Figure 6.2). Now it acts mainly as a large tourist center and a space for people to gather. Interestingly it still does fulfill political needs, just not for the Roman government. The Pamphilj Palace now acts as the home of the Brazilian embassy in Rome, facilitating the connection between Italy and an important foreign power (Figure 6.4).

From a hydraulic engineering perspective Piazza Navona takes pressurized water from the Aqua Virgo aqueduct (Location shown on Figure 5) (Dellacasa, 2024) to power its fountains and allow it to flood the Piazza. Back when it was a stadium it used to be flooded to have mock sea battles (Dellacasa, 2024), and even afterwards it was occasionally flooded as a piazza by order of the pope.

Piazza Navona has connections to several larger roads connecting to the rest of the city, and the space that used to be the race track of the stadium has space for vehicular traffic. In the past it used to have more space for parking, but now it primarily relies on public transit and walking for people to get there (Dellacasa 2024).

7. Concluding Thoughts

Public spaces in Italy, from the forums of the past to the piazzas of the present offer a great glance into the lives and society of the people they serve. They tell us what the people wanted in their cities, and how they tried to serve their needs. They feature many of the great works of engineering and architecture that Italy is famous for, with countless photos of churches, fountains, and Roman ruins filling up the phones of tourists everywhere. The lasting use and impact of these Roman and Italian designs show us that they understood many of the essential parts of creating a good city, one that people can comfortably and proudly live in. When tourists may take photos of the piazzas they see in Italy, they may want to take mind of what makes these places so desirable and how those traits could be applied elsewhere.

References

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10. Fig. 2 – schematic map of the aqueducts of Ancient Rome (map by cassius… (n.d.-a). https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-map-of-the-aqueducts-of-Ancient-Rome-map-by-Cassius-Ahenobarbus-11_fig1_320044489
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