Exploring the Best-Preserved Roman City

Timgad, now in northeastern Algeria, is the most famous example of Roman urban planning. Founded as a veteran colony at the beginning of the 2nd century AD, the city was laid out on a neat checkerboard of streets, centered on the Forum and public buildings. Today, with the help of footage from my recent visit, we'll use the example of Timgad to explore how Roman cities were laid out, how they functioned, and how they evolved over the centuries. As we'll see, Roman urban planning was both rigid and flexible. Although there were clear expectations about the amenities and monuments that a new city should have, the way a city developed was shaped by its topography, its history, and the whims of its benefactors. Timgad was a veteran colony, a place for discharged legionaries to settle. It was planned by military surveyors who applied the same basic principles to forts and cities. Roman forts of the early imperial era were almost always rectangular, with a gate on each side. Through those gates ran the principal streets, which intersected at the headquarters complex in the center. At Timgad, likewise, the principal streets were oriented to the city gates and met at the Forum. This is the Cardo Maximus, Timgad's primary north-south street. As you can see, it was carefully paved. There was a sewer below and porticos on either side that sheltered pedestrians from the sun and rain. The Cardo Maximus and other streets outlined blocks about 20 meters square. Each block contained two or three dwellings for the veterans and their families. Although there was no standard house plan, most were centered on a courtyard with a portico on at least one side and a triclinium, or dining room, opening from it. Timgad's Forum was located where the two principal streets crossed, though the Forum Square itself was closed to traffic. Like most Roman provincial forums, it was rectangular and bounded by porticos. It had the usual set of buildings, which we'll explore one by one. This was the Curia, where the town council met. Timgad had an oligarchic government, dominated by a small group of decurians, wealthy citizens. The space in which they convened was rectangular, with a podium for speakers on one end. The temple next to the Curia was probably the original Capitolium, a temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva that stood as a symbol of Timgad's status as a Roman colony. It was a typical Italian-style building, with a tall podium and columns in front. A rostrum, a speaker's platform, was later incorporated into the podium so that orators could address the assembled citizens. The civil basilica on the other side of the Forum was a multi-purpose structure, used alternately as a courtroom, covered market, and general meeting space. Like most buildings of its type, it was long and narrow, with a raised tribunal at one end. Just off the Forum was another typically Roman amenity, a public latrine. This example has 24 stone seats, equipped with rather stylish armrests in the form of dolphins. A drain below the seats carried waste into the sewers. Any self-respecting Roman city had facilities for public entertainment, and Timgad was no exception. A theater was constructed beside the Forum, an unusually central location, motivated by the existence of a natural hill. This theater only had seats for about 4,000 spectators, but since the population never exceeded 15,000, that was probably sufficient. The theater was built at least a half-century after Timgad was founded. Its site, however, was marked out from the beginning, a good example of long-term urban planning. Planning, however, only went so far. By the time the theater was built, Timgad had expanded well beyond its original walls. We'll explore the new areas after a brief word about this video's sponsor. Forum handcrafts wedding bands out of everything, from meteorite iron to whiskey barrel. 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The grid plan of the original city was ignored, and streets were laid out wherever the topography and property lines permitted. Even the city walls were progressively torn down to make room for new construction. The most imposing structures outside the walls were prestige projects built by members of the local elite for the city's glory and their own. Grandest of all was the new Capitolium, built two or three generations after the city's foundation. The colonnaded plaza in which the temple stood was larger than the Forum. The temple itself stood on a massive podium and was graced with towering Corinthian columns. This was the equivalent of a medieval cathedral, a monument to civic wealth, civic piety, and civic pride that could be seen for miles around. Timgad's expansion was also commercial. Although some space had been set aside for markets in the original plan, this proved insufficient for the growing city. At the beginning of the third century, a wealthy citizen built a large new market outside the walls. It was laid out as a rectangular courtyard with porticos to cover merchants' stalls. Six permanent booths, probably rented out to merchants on a long-term basis, flanked the primary entrance. On the opposite side, a semi-circular exedra housed nine more stalls. The whole structure was lavishly decorated and provided with two statues of the donor and his wife. Eventually, there would be no fewer than 14 baths in Timgad, ranging in size from tiny establishments built into former houses to imperial-style thermae. Perhaps the most interesting complex is the Great South Baths, which date to the early third century. These baths had the usual mix of cold, warm, and hot rooms, but because they were built at the wedge-shaped intersection of two roads, they had a unique asymmetrical layout, yet more evidence for the organic essence of Roman city planning. After reaching its maximum size by the early third century, Timgad seems to have changed relatively little for a long time. As in many Roman cities, Timgad's late antique elite spent less on public building projects than their ancestors had, preferring to elaborate existing spaces and structures. The great exception were churches. In Timgad, as in Rome itself, the most important Christian buildings were on the city's outskirts. These are the remains of the Donatist Episcopal Quarter, built by members of a Christian sect over the course of the fourth century. Although it hasn't been fully excavated, the complex includes a large church, a baptistry, and a bishop's residence. Over the following centuries, churches would be built in the heart of Timgad, and the city's temples would be converted or torn down. Along with the rest of Roman North Africa, Timgad was conquered by the Vandals in the fifth century and retaken by East Roman armies in the sixth. The Byzantine general Solomon erected a massive castle just outside the city over the site of a healing spring. Much of central Timgad was demolished to supply the stone. A visitor on the eve of the Arab invasions would have found much of Timgad in ruins, and a forbidding fortress looming over the rubble of half a millennium of Roman urban planning. If you enjoyed this video, I think you'll like my tour of Duga, Tunisia, perhaps the only Roman city in North Africa better preserved than Timgad. You'll find the link on screen and in the description. My new book, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines, is now available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook. You can buy your copy through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. For more Told-in-Stone content, check out my channels, Told-in-Stone Footnotes, and Scenic Routes to the Past, which are linked in the description. Please consider joining other viewers in supporting Told-in-Stone on Patreon. 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