Rykwert The Idea of a Town

The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30876-7
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 252 Seiten

Roman towns and their history are generally regarded as being the preserve of the archaeologist or the economic historian. In this famous, unusual and radical book which touches on such disparate themes as psychology and urban architecture, Joseph Rykwert has considered them as works of art. His starting point is the mythical, historical and ritual texts in which their foundation is recounted rather than the excavated remains, such texts having parallels not merely in ancient Greece but also further afield Mesopotamia, India and China. To achieve his reading of the Roman town, he has invoked the comparative method of the anthropologists, and he examines first of all the 'Etruscan rite', a group of ceremonies by which all, or practically all, Roman towns were founded. The basic institutions of the town, its walls and gates, its central shrines and its forum are all of them part of a pattern to which the rituals and the myths that accompanied them provide clues. Like in other 'closed' societies, these rituals and myths served to create a secure home for the citizen of Rome and to make him feel part of his city and place it firmly in a knowable universe. 'It is refreshing to look at standard themes of the history of urban design from a nonrational point of view, to see surveyors as quasi priests and orthogonal planning as a sophisticated technique touched by divine mystery . . .. Rykwert's lasting worth will be to wrench us away from rationalist simplicities, and to make us face the fundamental disquietof the human spirit in its claim to a permanent place on the land.' Spiro Kostoff, Journal of the Society Architectural Historians

Joseph Rykwert is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of art and architecture. Born in Warsaw in 1926, he is a naturalized British citizen. He has held a number of university teaching posts in Britain and the United States. He is currently Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus and Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of numerous books, among his most celebrated are The Golden House, On Adam's House in Paradise and The Idea of Town (reissued in Faber Finds).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rykwert, Joseph

Leseproben

Illustrations

The drawing of the sulcus primigenius

1 Topography of early Rome

2 Romulus and Remus

3 An augur

4 An augur

5 The sow with thirty piglets

6 The Templum of the Sky

7 Bronze cross

8 The surveyor’s gnomon in relation to a centuriated area

9 The face of the sundial divided up

10 A Roman ‘rose of the winds’

11 The Roman agrimensor at work

12 The stele of the agrimensor Lucius Aebutius Faustus

13 A haruspex divining

14 A scene of liver divination

15 A divinatory liver

16 The examination of entrails and the council of diviners

17 A bronze hanging lamp

18 The entrail-demon Humbaba

19 Model of a divining liver

20 Etruscan model of liver

21 The Piacenza liver

22 Ager Subsicivus

23 The Severan Forma Urbis Romae

24 A public building

25 The top surfaces of Gracchan Cippi

26 The Templum of the Earth

27 The countryside between Montélimar and Orange

28 The marble map of the district between Pierrelatte and Donzère

29 The Map of Orange

30 ‘Hard Times on the Farm’

31, 32 A ritual ploughing scene

33 The founder of the town performing the cutting of the sulcus

34 Coin of Berytus

35 Coin of Celsa

36 Coin of Caesarea Augusta

37 Coin of Caesarea Augusta

38 Carrying a plough

39 Pigorini’s restoration of Castellazzo di Fontanellato

40 Pigorini’s reconstruction of the timber caissons at Castione

41, 42 Excavations at Castellazzo di Fontanellato

43 Barakau village

44 Scene probably showing the construction of a hut

45 House with stairs

46 Sections of the Great Naquane rock

47 Marzabotto: present state of excavations

48 Marzabotto: aerial photograph of the site

49–51 Marzabotto: acropolis

52 The town from the Acropolis

53 Spina: remains of pile supports of a dwelling

54 The harbour quarter of Spina

55 The Palatine Hill

56 Forum Romanum

57, 58 The Salians moving the ancilia

59, 60, 61 Three Villanovan bi-conic cinerary urns

62 Villanovan bi-conic cinerary urn

63 House urn and bi-conic cinerary urn

64 Villanovan bi-conic cinerary urn

65–67 House urns

68 Rome, Forum, Sepolcretto, Tomb GG

69 Reconstruction of a Palatine hut

70 Rome, Palatine: the rectangular hut belonging to the earlier settlement

71 A rectangular hut on the Palatine

72 The Palatine village

73 The Temple of Vesta on the Forum

74 The Atrium Vestae, the Aedes Vestae, the Regia and the Sanctuary of Juturna

75 Reconstruction of the ‘original’ Aedes Vestae and Regia

76 Hut-urn from the Sepolcretto on the Forum in Rome

77 Obverse of a Vespasian denarius

78 The Temple of Vesta

79 The Atrium Vestae

80, 81 The Atrium Vestae

82 The Regia

83 Aerial view of the Regia and the Aedes Vestae

84 Altar to an unknown god

85 Munthuch

86 Hermaphrodite, boy with pan-pipe and term

87 Hermaphrodite as term

88 The Comitium during the excavations of 1900

89 Church of St. Joseph of the Carpenters

90 Aerial view of the Comitium

91 The Lapis Niger during excavation

92 The monuments under the Lapis Niger

93 The Lapis Niger, lower and upper levels

94, 95 Cosa, the Capitol

96 The Templum of the Earth

97 Cosa quadrata: the crevasse in the rock

98 Cosa quadrata: the Temple of Jupiter

99 Cosa quadrata: plan of the platform

100, 101 Cloaca Maxima

102 The Bothros at Agrigento

103 The sacrifice of the Suovetaurilia

104 The closing of a lustrum

105 The sacrifice of the Suovetaurilia

106 The so-called Plough of Talamone

107 Solidus of Commodus

108 Statuette of hero or divinity ploughing

109 Aes Liberale, Rome

110 Hittite cylinder seal

111 Hittite seal

112 The Temple of Janus

113 The Arch of Janus Quadrifrons

114 Minoan seal

115 Ring-bezel, Mycenae

116 Cippi of Janus Quadrifrons

117 Two crouching sphinxes

118 Oedipus and the Sphinx

119, 120 Two Roman maze-mosaics

121 Theseus killing the Minotaur

122 Etruscan hut-urn

123 The Tragliatella Oinochoe

124–127 Coins of Knossos

128–130 Sand-drawings by natives of the New Hebridean Islands

131 The punishment of Tarpeia

132–139 The Agora of Kyrene with the tomb and Heroon of Battos

140, 141 The buried shrine at Paestum

142 Plan of the buried shrine at Paestum

143 Detailed plan of the buried shrine at Paestum

144 Two amphorae from the buried shrine at Paestum

145 Mandala of Amogha-Pasa

146 The Vástupurušamandala

147–150 Four of the village...