The Roman City

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Advances made by the Romans in the field of military engineering could also be applied to civil architecture. Until the modern day, Europe has not had such a plan for a system of public works as that drawn up by the Romans more than two thousand years ago.

The location of the city, the construction of town walls, ensuring a water supply, the cleaning system by means of a sewage network, public buildings, the type and height of housing, the number of inhabitants a town could hold... This was all calculated in order to plan pleasant, functional towns. There were two kinds of town: colonies or newly created towns, such as Tarraco (Tarragona) and Barcino (Barcelona), where the residents had almost the same rights as Roman citizens, and municipalities or towns built on prior settlements, which had to pay taxes to Rome, such as Emporiae (Empúries), Gerunda (Girona), Egara (Terrassa) and Ilerda (Lleida).

Beyond the town walls there were ager, the fields of crops that supplied the townspeople with cereals, wine, oil, vegetables and pulses. This land was used by Roman colonists for their villae, autonomous production units dedicated primarily to agriculture and stockbreeding.

The towns were interconnected by a road network. The roads were laid out so that any kind of obstacle could be overcome using bridges, distances were marked with milestones and there were also areas for feeding animals and accommodation for travellers. The Via Augusta was the most important of these thoroughfares: it ran through the Empire from Rome to Gades (Cadiz), following the coastline.