Misplaced Pages

#978021

21-606: The name Cento is a reference to the centuriation of the Po Valley . Cento's growth from its origin as a little fishing village in the marshes to an established farming town took place in the first few centuries in the second millennium . The Bishop of Bologna and the Abbot of Nonantola established the Partecipanza Agraria , an institution in which land would perpetually be redistributed every twenty years among

42-405: A mundus cerialis , an underground chamber dedicated to the underground gods, was dug next to it as a part of the breaking ground for the city. The Roman idea of an absolute and unchangeable center of the city is related to the beliefs that the city is a permanent dwelling of gods, with both the umbilicus and the pomerium predestined by the divine forces; even if the city was physically destroyed, it

63-657: A distance from each other of 20 actus (710.40 m). Each of the square areas – 20 × 20 actus – resulting from this further division was called a centuria or century . This 200 jugera area of the centuria became prevalent in the period when the large areas of the Po Valley were delimited, while smaller centuries of 10 × 10 actus , as the name centuria suggests, had formerly been used. Contemporary Roman sources as well as modern archeological results suggest that centuria varied in size from 50 to 400 jugera, with some subdivisions using non-square plots. The land

84-524: A grid of townships for survey purposes, which ultimately led to the United States Public Land Survey System . The similarity of the two systems is empirically obvious in certain parts of Italy, for example, where traces of centuriation have remained. However, Thrower points out that, unlike the later US system, "not all Roman centuriation displays consistent orientation" . This is because, for practical reasons,

105-498: A swinging arm, with a plumb bob suspended underneath. The purpose of offsetting the reference point from the Jacob's staff (vertical pole) was twofold: it enabled sighting of lines on the ground through a pair of strings (used to suspend an opposite pair of plumbs from the cross) and allowed placing the reference point over a sturdy object (like a boundary stone ), where the staff cannot be inserted. This Rome -related article

126-653: Is the European's city of Carnival and it is twinned with Rio carnival . The nearby center of Renazzo is known in the astronomical community because of the Renazzo meteorite, which fell in 1824 and it is considered the prototype of a class of carbonaceous chondrites known as " CR group " (where the "R" comes from the name Renazzo). Cento is twinned with: Centuriation Centuriation (in Latin centuriatio or, more usually, limitatio ), also known as Roman grid ,

147-415: The ager publicus , gave a great impetus to land division through centuriation. Centuriation was used later for land reclamation and the foundation of new colonies as well as for the allocation of land to veterans of the many civil wars of the late Republic and early Empire, including the battle of Philippi in 42 BCE. This is mentioned by Virgil , in his Eclogues , when he complains explicitly about

168-470: The Via Emilia ) or other geomorphological features. Centuriation is typical of flat land, but centuriation systems have also been documented in hilly country. Sometimes the umbilicus agri was located in a city or a castrum . This central point was generally referred to as groma , from the name of the instrument used by the gromatici (surveyors). In such cases, the grid was traced by extending

189-493: The ager centuriatus system. The surveyor first identified a central viewpoint, the umbilicus . He then took up his position there and, looking towards the west, defined the territory with the following names: He then traced the grid using an instrument known as a groma , tracing two road axes perpendicular to each other: It has been suggested that the Roman centuriation system inspired Thomas Jefferson 's proposal to create

210-399: The allocation of his lands near Mantua to the soldiers who had participated in that battle. Centuriation was widely used throughout Italy and also in some provinces. For example, careful analysis has identified, in the area between Rome and Salerno , 80 different centuriation systems created at different times. Various land division systems were used, but the most common was known as

231-406: The city spaces, including the pomerium , a sacred city boundary. The place for an umbilicus was supposedly set by examining the sky. The standard city plan included two major thoroughfares, decumanus maximus and cardo maximus , intersecting at the umbilicus thus starting the centuriation ( surveying ). Umbilicus played an important spiritual role. Not only it symbolized the birth of a city;

SECTION 10

#1732781077979

252-460: The form of roads , canals and agricultural plots. In some cases these plots, when formed, were allocated to Roman army veterans in a new colony , but they might also be returned to the indigenous inhabitants, as at Orange (France). The study of centuriation is very important for reconstructing landscape history in many former areas of the Roman empire . The Romans began to use centuriation for

273-458: The foundation, in the fourth century BCE, of new colonies in the ager Sabinus , northeast of Rome. The development of the geometric and operational characteristics that were to become standard came with the founding of the Roman colonies in the Po valley , starting with Ariminum ( Rimini ) in 268 BCE. The agrarian law introduced by Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE, which included the privatisation of

294-427: The human pressure of urban growth and infrastructures destroyed many of the traces scattered throughout the agricultural countryside. In English: In Italian: In French: In German: In English: In Catalan and Spanish: In French: Umbilicus (reference point) In a typical Roman city, an umbilicus ( umbilicus urbis , "city navel ") represented the reference point used by the city planners to map out

315-551: The male heirs of the families who constituted the initial core of the community in the 12th century. In 1502, Pope Alexander VI took it away from the dominion of the Bishop of Bologna and made it part of the dowry of his daughter Lucrezia Borgia , betrothed to Duke Alfonso I d'Este . It was later returned to the Papal States in 1598. South-east of the city lies the small historic fortification of Pieve di Cento . Cento

336-401: The orientation of the axes did not always coincide with the four cardinal points and followed instead the orographic features of the area, also taking into account the slope of the land and the flow of rainwater along the drainage channels that were traced (centuriation of Florentia ( Florence ). In other cases, it was based on the orientation of existing lines of communication (centuriation along

357-424: The urban cardo maximus and the decumanus maximus through the gates of the city into the surrounding agricultural land. Parallel secondary roads ( limites quintarii ) were then traced on both sides of the initial axes at intervals of 100 actus (about 3.5 km). The territory was thus divided into square areas. The road network density was then increased with other roads parallel to those already traced at

378-570: Was a method of land measurement used by the Romans . In many cases land divisions based on the survey formed a field system , often referred to in modern times by the same name. According to O. A. W. Dilke , centuriation combined and developed features of land surveying present in Egypt, Etruria, Greek towns and Greek countryside. Centuriation is characterised by the regular layout of a square grid traced using surveyors' instruments. It may appear in

399-458: Was divided after the completion of the roads. Each century was divided into 10 strips, lying parallel to the cardo and the decumanus , with a distance between them of 2 actus (71.04 m), thus forming 100 squares ( heredia ) of about 0.5 hectares each: 100 heredia = 1 centuria . Each heredium was divided in half along the north–south axis thus creating two jugera : one jugerum , from jugum (yoke), measured 2523 square metres, which

420-402: Was not forsaken for as long as the deities remained. The term umbilicus agri ("navel of the field") was used if the surveying was done for the agricultural land, frequently the same reference point was used for the city and the surrounding land. Umbilicus soli (the "ground navel") was the name for the reference point of the Roman surveying tool, the groma , located at the moving end of

441-412: Was the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day by a pair of oxen. Even today, in some parts of Italy, the landscape of the plain is determined by the outcome of Roman centuriation, with the persistence of straight elements (roads, drainage canals, property divisions) which have survived territorial development and are often basic elements of urbanisation, at least until the twentieth century, when

SECTION 20

#1732781077979
#978021